


Then There Was Darkness

by FleshDust



Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Biting, Bondage, Branding, Death, Imprisonment, Kidnapping, Master/Pet, Mordor, Multi, Necrophagy (mentioned), Necrophilia (mentioned), Oral Sex, Orcs, Pain, Painful Sex, Physical Abuse, Prisoner of War, Rape, Sexual Violence, Slavery, Violence, Voyeurism, Whipping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-04 04:34:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4125654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleshDust/pseuds/FleshDust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mairwen, a healer in Osgiliath, is taken captive by Orcs during the War of the Ring. She is brought to Gorbag, an Orc captain of Mordor. Imprisoned in the Tower of Cirith Ungol and abused in horrible ways by the sadistic Captain, she can feel her sanity slowly slip away. In the end, she will do whatever she has to do in order to escape her tormentor before her mind is completely claimed by darkness.</p><p><b>March, 2018: </b> This story is currently on hiatus. I will continue it, I just don't know when. Thank you for your support, and feel free to contact me at fleshdust [at] gmail [dot] com if you have any questions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another rewrite of a story of mine. The chapters are undergoing near complete rewrites as we speak, and I should be able to post new chapters regularly. As usual, please know that this is **not** a story of hearts and flowers. This is a very dark tale, full of all types of nasty debauchery, including violent rape, physical abuse, etc. There will be no rosy endings here. Peruse the tags, if you would be so kind.
> 
> I am not above defiling canon to fit my own unhinged plans. If you spot canon errors, its probably because I've had my grubby mitts all up in there. Or not. I might be pulling things out of my ass. In either case, I will resist the temptation to stick a cyborg Cthulhu in there or something.

 

 

There was cold stone beneath her fingers where she was sprawled, the side of her face pressed into the unyielding slate. A smell of rot and sour death was thick and bitter in her nostrils. Sounds of sinister cackling were all around her, the noises making the skin of her back grow frigid with a crawling sensation that started at the nape of her neck and slithered along her spine. Her eyes remained closed and the terror in the pit of her belly coiled at the foul voices all around her. She knew that these voices were not those of Men. Sprinkled within the crude jeers were smatterings of a language so cursed and vile and unclean that no Man would ever utter it even if they had the knowledge. She had heard bits of it aplenty during her service, and she knew that the vile cacophony around her did not bode well.

_Not well at all._

It had been a bleak day the last time her eyes had been open. The air had been gray with fog and thick with the despair of Men whose morals were dwindling swiftly. Osgiliath was crumbling at the decisive, malevolent hands of Mordor. As one of the few remaining herbal healers in the Citadel of the Stars, she and her associates had performed their duties as best as they could to help the fighters while they desperately fought the black tide that emerged out of the Land of Shadow.

One night the river had suddenly been awash with dark creatures wielding black blades and poisoned arrows. Mordorian assaults were usually far more conspicuous as it seemed that Mordorian troops had a basic inability to contain their innate bloodlust even when a stealthy assault was attempted. Some Orcish blackguard would be unable to contain their glee for slaughter and voiced it with a series of squealing yelps, after which the noise would spread like wildfire through the troops. The Orcish superiors would curse and scourge their peons with whips, but the noise would have long since alerted the city’s defenses.

This time, there had only been silence and the gentle darkness of a late evening until the pandemonium began.

Battalions of Orcs, Uruk-hai and other wretched miscreants that Men had no names for swiftly invaded the deteriorating city under the horrid screeches of flying beasts and their Undead, shrouded riders. Confusion and panic had reigned. The defenders of the city had scrambled quickly to quell the attack, but their numbers had already been thin before the sneak assault. A runner had been dispatched to the White City for reinforcements, but he had departed only the day before. Assembling men to cross Pelennor Fields usually took more than a day. It took some earnest scrounging to find men who would be willing to defend the oft-cursed city of Osgiliath. Some were more willing once offered thrice the usual wage, but others refused flatly to defend such an ill-omened place.

And now another black plague of Mordorian forces had descended on the city, and none were sure that their defenses would hold. She had aided as best as she could—pulling arrows from poisoned flesh, hastily binding wounds, applying splints to broken limbs and offering milky poppydrops to those who needed it to dull the pain and to keep fighting—but it was all for naught.

Her heart had lurched with grief with every time she saw a Gondorian fighter who was already dead—so beyond her help, with horrid, gaping slashes that displayed torn insides. Then her eyes had fallen on a dying soldier with a morbidly deep gash in his belly. His clawing hands had desperately been cradling the innards welling out of the wound, having scooped them up from the ground where he had fallen. The slick intestines were coated with grit and debris. He started to try to stow them back into the wide slit even as they just kept coming back out again. His mouth was open in a silent howl for help, strings of phlegm and blood drooping between his lips. His eyes were filled with disbelief like it wasn't really his own bloated entrails slipping between his fingers.

The blood, the _blood_... it was thickly welling out of him in a dark stream that would guarantee his passing. She had seen blood aplenty before, but the blatant waste of it all made her very spirit despair.

In desperation she had rushed over to the soldier, cradling his head in her lap, listening to the mournful, gurgling cries that emerged from his throat. Her hand stroked his matted, grimy hair. A small flash of gratitude had lit his tormented eyes then—at least he would not die alone.

But it was not to be. There was a harsh, swift strike to the back of her head with something dull, rendering her unconscious as she was carried aloft by strong dirty paws. The soldier's head fell to the ground with a dull thud as the healer’s lap was swept out from underneath it. He hadn't the strength to even keep his head up. There was a strange susurrus in his ears that diminished the nasty snarls and growls around him. As life fled his body, he found himself desperately willing his broken body to work again and stop the vicious Orcs as they carried the healer away.

And then, he died alone.

* * *

A generous gaggle of lesser Orcs had gathered around the main hall of the Tower of Cirith Ungol, many of them circling the soft little body on the filthy floor. They were skulking about the thing, mocking it, but most did not quite dare to paw at it since the Captain's orders had been to bring him a _tark_ plaything. The Captain had impressed upon them the importance of leaving the _tark_ unspoiled. The order had been: No fuckin’, no bitin’; hands off. These _snaga_ -Orcs knew that they most assuredly had not violated the first or second directives.

It was getting trickier to obey the third order. Some argued that they had already manhandled it (after all, capturing it was impossible without touching the thing!) so that _probably_ meant that they would be allowed to poke at it, if only a little. Just yank the queer mane on its head, or prick the pale hide with a claw. Kick it around a little bit to see what noises it’d make. They’d seen _tarks_ aplenty in battle, but this was the first time they were near one what wasn’t trying to lop Orcish heads off. A female, no less—most had never even been within sniffing distance of one of those.

Othe individuals insisted that a policy of complete lack of contact was better, since unspoiled probably meant that the Captain wanted the _tark_ completely fresh and as unmolested as possible. This discussion of Orcish semantics and its technicalities went on for a while. Some of the more cautious Orcs washed their hands of it, insisting that erring on the safe side was best. If the bosses said to kill three Enemies, better go and kill twice that, just to be safe. If their superior said hands off a _tark_ , then don’t mess with the thing more than absolutely necessary. Most of them knew (or eventually found out) that it was best not to trifle with your superiors.

The female stayed as still as she could, but when a particularly brave, snaggletoothed creature leapt forward and gave her a prod with a bony finger, she cried out. Her gray eyes flew open and she gathered herself into curled position on the floor, gathering her knees and hugging them close to her body.

"Please, do not harm me! Leave me in peace... leave me..."

At this, a couple of the creatures hooted with great amusement, and many of them fell into fits of fiendish laughter. What was probably vile, mocking epithets spoken in their native tongue barraged her until a deeper voice made itself known, one that immediately silenced the pack of Orcs around her.

"Oi!" snarled the voice, "The _tark's_ awake! Get Captain Gorbag—you! Get'im. _Now_!"

"But, Captain Shagrat..." whined a raspy, nasal voice, " ... can't we 'ave a wee bit of sport with this one? 'Ave never seen one up close an' all, what's th’ harm, eh?"

"Are you fuckin' deaf, hah? 'S Gorbag's toy, you stupid twat. Fetch 'im here now, or I'll have yer fuckin' head."

The unmistakable sound of flesh striking flesh followed, and the Orc who had protested scuttled away with a slew of chittering yelps.

She kept her forehead pressed to her knees, too frightened to do anything else—the realization of her situation had become fully apparent. She had prayed that it was simply a phantasm of some sort, that perhaps she had been struck and fallen unconscious on the battle field, and this was some morbid product of a mind too often subject to the horrors of war. But no matter how much she might have wished for it, she had known within moments after waking that it was not so.

She tried to listen to the chatter of the rabble for clues on how to get out of the situation, but found it near impossible. Not only was the clamor growing louder and more incoherent, but it was also a nasty mix of the language of Mordor and warped Westron.

Suddenly the pack of Orcs fell eerily quiet. She felt the little downy hairs on the back of her neck rise; somehow, this unhinged silence was worse. It was hardly ever a good sign to have total silence. When the birdsong died in the forest and the susurrus of other critters vanished it was a sure sign of a predator skulking in the undergrowth.

Then came the footsteps, scraping along the dirt lodged in between every stone of the floor. She felt her face drain of all color as the sound drew closer to her. They stopped far too close for comfort and a raspy chortle escaped the owner. She did not look up, remaining on the floor with her arms locked about her knees. It made her feel safer, as if she was sequestered from this abhorrent place. But she knew that the farce would not help for long.

* * *

Captain Gorbag regarded the cowering white-skin closely. Its scent was thick and bitter with fear. He hadn't really been specific of the gender of the _tark_ toy that he had ordered his boys to procure, leading him to assume that they would bring him a male. After all, battlefields were crawling with them. When their numbers declined in times of war (and Gorbag had seen a few of those), the _tarks_ always ended up drafting unseasoned striplings in order to boost their numbers. Boys, really, so green that they pissed grass. A weapon of some sort would be pushed into the palm of these youngsters, and they would be sent forth (often in the vanguard) to battle his kind. Sure enough, their battle-shouts rang loudly enough as they charged, bolstered by foolish pride and hubris, but in the end they were nothing but minced offal, with a few _tark_ lads ending up unwilling whores of Mordor.

Male _tarks_ had been at the unfortunate end of his attentions before, but the last one had been at least sixty years ago, and it had not lasted all that long. He hardly remembered what it had looked like, except that its eyes had been the same color as unclouded sky. It had seemed like such a hassle to feed it and keep it alive just for a fuck, so he had kept it for only a few moons and then made a gift of it to his boys. They had fucked it until the light went out of its eyes and after, its red flesh had filled their bellies.

 _Tarks_ were pathetically protective of their females, and he could not remember seeing or smelling one on a battlefield before. It seemed that their mares were prohibited from fighting. It had lead the Orc Captain to nearly forget that such a queer thing as females of Men existed.

But indeed, the little _tark_ -thing on the floor was female. And that was that was quite interesting.

Its skin was smooth and pale, filthy, but with cleaner blotches shining here and there. The thick mane of hair on its head was dark brown. The body was small and while its garb hid most of its body, he could discern the curve of its hips. He was not able to peruse any of its frontal charms, as it were, curled up as it was like a waxy grub. Its garb was tattered and muddy, stained with the blood of its fellows and the grime of battle. Raw marks marred the white wrists where rope had eaten into the skin.

Underneath the caustic smell of its fear and sweat and strife he could detect the scent of its femininity. It was a soft, sweet scent of vitality that he could not remember in _tark_ males even though they smelled quite tempting on their own. The smell of Man-flesh overall was enticing, summoning an urge to fuck, fight, slay and eat its source. Luckily, he could withstand the latter two in order to have a novelty like this to play with for a while.

A strong urge to simply fuck her right there amidst the hooting rabble came to him. What noises would she make? How would her pale flesh feel? How much could he make her bleed? The temptation to find out was quite strong.

The closest to _tark_ -fucking that he had gotten since his latest doxy was to fuck the lifeless corpses of enemies, something many of his kind did on occasion. Violation of dead flesh was not uncommon, and the other sexual pastime they could indulge in was Orcish unions.

Countless mottled teeth and black tongues that had touched his scarred flesh were the same as any other and the voices that grunted while providing or receiving violent release were the same. Actual penetration was always done in the same way. Some unfortunate snaga would be ambushed and fucked in any available orifice. Consent was copacetic, but not at all necessary. Cocks would be quickly shoved into mouth and ass, and anything anyone ever cared about was to squirt before others became impatient. On occasion, a slow finisher would quickly find himself to be the new focus of brutal Orcish attentions.

He had to admit to himself that dead _tark_ flesh was an appreciated change. Though cold and inanimate, the body of a _tark_ soldier was always a delightful treat. On occasion, they could be lucky enough to rut with a corpse that was still slightly warm. Once in a blue moon, a female corpse may be found after a village raid or somesuch. It wasn't common, since these _tarks_ would herd their mares off when even the smallest flicker of a threat was near. Such a find would summon a type of insanity and frenetic activity among the Orcs. The body would quickly be fucked so many times that in the end, there would not be much left to eat. If one felt so inclined to eat flesh soaked in Orc spunk, that was.

The delight that his kind showed when presented with a female _tark_ wasn't a question of preference, really. Not many Orcs were particular about the gender of their partner, and it was much more a matter of rudimentary Orcish mathematics: my cock plus a hole to stuff it into equals entertainment. The variable was simply that it was different kind of flesh to stick your cock into. The excitement of something new. Variety, as it were. Not to mention that in the case of females there was a whole another orifice to rut, which also boiled down to basic arithmetic.

A deep sound of despair emerged from the female on the floor and interrupted Gorbag's thoughts. The rabble in the hall responded to the whines with noticeable excitement, and he realized that he would have to keep an eye on all of that. Gorbag could hardly blame them when it came down to it. Such a little thing that smelled so fresh and alive underneath the stink of battle and the blood of Men. Who could resist the temptation to thoroughly debase such a taintless creature? A pleasant shudder snaked itself down Gorbag's spine and a small malevolent smile ghosted across his mouth.

* * *

She cried out when a strong paw seized her hair and hauled her off the floor that had somehow become safer than simply standing amidst these miscreants. Her mock-safe façade was broken now and that tiny sense of safety had guttered out like a dying candle. She was roughly shoved hither and yon but then she was face to face with one of the most atrocious creatures she had ever seen. It had narrow face furrowed with scars and its eyes were deep-set under a protruding brow. Angular cheekbones jutted out by its pointy ears, giving its features a gaunt, gnarled appearance. The marred skin was a sickly blend of yellow and grey and it puckered like old leather as it grimaced at her. Its sallow eyes gleamed. Jagged teeth were revealed as it parted its dark, wet lips into a smirk that promised ill tidings.

The head was only partially crowned by stringy patches of hair that, while thin, had some length to it where it hung to its shoulders, disheveled and lanky about its face. It was a head taller than her, its body gangly underneath the layers of stained leather and arbitrarily applied bits of armor. It wound its hand into her dark hair and shoved its face into the crook of her neck, inhaling deeply. This summoned a terrified cry from her, much to the delight of the other Orcs.

She had laid her eyes on many of his kind in battle when she was stowed away or protected behind soldiers that would shortly thereafter require her care due to poisoned arrows or the black swords that would sometimes be coated in something so foul that even if the wound itself was not of any real concern, the flesh would soon be beset by a black corruption that would quickly snuff out the life of its victim. She had seen the Orcish faces in the distance, eyes gleaming like those of alley cats as they hooted and jeered and slaughtered. But she had never been this close to one of their kind, and the fact that she was at its mercy was terrifying.

"Well, boys," the creature holding her aloft exclaimed, "T'is a mighty fine tark you fetched. Should be excellent sport."

Whooping bedlam erupted in the dark stone hall again. A poxy Orc with skin the color of rotting olives approached, speaking to her captor in that abominable tongue. The Captain’s gruesome face turned back to look at her, speaking again in Westron.

"Nar," he smirked, "This one’s mine alone. Fer now."

The Orcs closest to them groaned with begrudging disappointment, but dared not challenge their Captain’s statement.

"Have you a name, white-skin?"

She turned her eyes back to the Captain. Fear had completely taken her over, morphing her eyes into grotesquely protruding versions of themselves. She stared stupidly at it. _Him_. She had heard his question— _demand_ —but her features remained slack and dull and her mouth was trying to move to tell him her name, but to no avail. When a sound finally came from her lips it was simply a meaningless squawk of terror that meant nothing.

He backhanded her hard. A claw left a burning gouge along her cheekbone.

She cried out with the force of his blow, much to his delight. He repeated his demand, this time with an urgency that left no room for doubt that more beatings were to follow should she not reply. He shook her slightly and she could feel her scalp burn in response to his yanking about.

"I.. I am... Mairwen."

The wicked smile flashed across his face again. She already hated that grin. Already hated _him_. She had never felt such a passionate sense of pure loathing. The sensation seemed thoroughly evil, as if she would offend Eru just by feeling it. But why would Eru’s gaze be upon a forsaken place like this? Her hatred seemed only appropriate.

"Well, white-skin. This'll be how it goes. Yer mine now, and ye’ll obey me in ev’rythin’. What say you to _that_?"

"But please," she begged desperately, "Let me go. I have not done you any ill. You _must_ let me go. _Please_."

"What pretty manners ya have, white-skin. Please this, please that... "

His face drew even closer to hers. Trying to recoil, she achieved nothing but a tighter grip on her hair. She could smell a heavy scent of death on him. Death. Blood. Sweat, iron and rotting leather. And malice… such dark, insane malice. The dangerous grin still curled his black lips and his eyes gleamed with something unsettling that she had no name for.

“Yer mine now, little _tark_. I will do with ya whatever th’ fuck I want. Heh? Understood?”

"But why?" Mairwen whispered. "I have done nothing to deserve this. Please, please, let me go…"

"'Why, why, why...'" He was mocking her with her own words, only to snarl right into her face the moment after.

"Quit that whimperin’, or I will 'ave ya whipped. Or I’ll throw ya to the maggots here, eh! Believe me, lettin' the boys have a go at a li'l cunt like you, you'll be beggin' me for the scourge."

She fell silent, realizing that she could not appeal to his gentler side. There was simply none to be found. The gaggle of Orcs had thinned, some becoming bored after realizing that the Captain had claimed her for himself. The ones that were left were taunting her excitedly and daring her to challenge their Captain. It was a cruel emphasis to his threat. Mairwen gritted her teeth and lowered her head in defeat.

He grabbed her waist roughly and tossed her over one shoulder, carrying her up the spiral staircase to the top of the Tower of Cirith Ungol where some dark fate awaited her. Orcish insults followed her as he hauled her up the staircase. One was repeated over and over again, though Mairwen did not understand it. She closed her eyes and pressed her mouth into a hard line against the panic that threatened to choke her.

_Snaga, snaga, snaga...._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_Tark_** \- Man of Gondor [noun], human (for the purposes of this story, at least)  
>  ** _Snaga_** \- Slave [noun]


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

Upon reaching the tower chambers, Captain Gorbag unceremoniously dumped his captive to the floor. Mairwen gave a pained grunt as her hip connected with stone. The Captain had already skulked off somewhere else in the chambers by the time she looked up, so she sat up carefully and surveyed her surroundings.

She was in a circular antechamber where wide entryways connected to adjoining rooms built of the same ashen stone as the rest of the structure. There were no doors other than the one of heavy, old oak that opened into the space she was in. She glimpsed windows in the chambers that had been amended with crude iron bars. They had corroded over time, bleeding tracks of maroon-colored rust into the stone.

There were few furnishings to speak of. A handful of stools and small benches were scattered about the antechamber. She could see the shapes of a table and some stools in one of the adjoining chambers, along with crates, piles of leather, sacks, and barrels. She squinted in an attempt to see more, but the gloom of the place prevented further view.

There was light here, and after searching for the source, she saw queer, angular lanterns on chains that hung from the ceiling. The holes of the lanterns seemed vaguely familiar in shape, and she narrowed her eyes with concentration, if only to have something else to think of for a spell. When she realized what they were, she blanched and swallowed a mournful noise.

The lanterns had been made out of the barbute helms of Gondorian soldiers, hammered and repurposed to hold burning oil or candles. The front opening of the helms where a soldier’s eyes, nose and mouth would have been served as slits from which the blushing light emerged. She quickly averted her eyes. Gorbag returned a few moments after, holding a bundle of cloth. Mairwen recoiled when he reached for her with his free hand, scrambling to her feet and her body tensing.

He sneered and advanced on her, and she took a few steps backward. All it earned her was another quick wallop across the face that made her head ring. Gorbag hauled her up by the scruff of her neck.  
  
“I told ya, _tark_ ,” he hissed, his voice full of irritation, “Yer mine. Ye’ll do whatever I want.”

Not waiting for a reply, he dragged her to one of the adjoining chambers. While large, the room was fairly bare, holding a few stuffed leather mattresses in an alcove, wooden boxes, barrels, and a few chests. A few barred windows were here and there, displaying a dark sky that sometimes lit up with ominous flashes of scarlet. In another alcove, there was a large barrel of water and a privy shaft, and this was where they were headed.

* * *

Captain Gorbag hauled his captive into the privy chamber and pushed her inside with such force that she hit the water barrel and tumbled to the floor. Descending on her, he grasped the collar of her dress and yanked. The neckline and bodice of it started to tear, and with it, the _tark_ bitch started to scream. At present, he had little desire to really even touch her since he had become aware of the scent that permeated her clothes and skin. It had hit him as he had carried her into the Tower chambers. It was an acrid odor of leaves and bark and starchy roots, a truly nasty stench of greenery. After he’d become aware of it, it had overpowered all of her sweet scents and now he wanted her to scrub the offending smell off her body. Her caterwauling only irritated him.

But instead of backhanding her again, he tightened his grip on her garment and gave a truly vicious snarl. He closed his other hand around her white throat and her small hands flew up to claw at his fingers. Her laughable efforts lightened his humor a little.

“I want you clean. Ya reek of some forest devilry. If you don’ do it, I’ll get a few of th’ boys t’ scrub ya. Then, of course, they need to ‘ave a reward for a job well done, and that’ll be all your _tark_ holes.”

The _tark_ paled and her eyes widened. It did not take long for her to nod tremulously, at which he released her. She coughed for a few moments and then righted herself. Hesitating at first, she then asked him if she could have some “privacy”, at which he growled that if that was the way of it, he could find someone to disrobe her, as well. Unsurprised but thoroughly terrorized, the _tark_ obeyed him. He thought that her desire for privacy would be droll when she needed to take a piss or a shit.

He suspected that some _snaga_ had snatched her footwear when they took her, because she was unshod. He wasn’t surprised; those little stinking gits would thieve anything they got their grubby little paws on. He supposed that he could find her some footwear in some corner somewhere; the Eye knew that every tier of the Tower had rooms full of Man-garbage that had been looted by some stupid shit what mistook it for valuables.

He watched the _tark_ remove the stinking dress with shaking hands. Her pale skin was revealed bit by bit. Gorbag felt his cock stiffen at the sight and at the thought of utterly destroying such a soft little thing, but instead of acting upon it, he tossed a bundle of clothes at her. The repulsive woodsy stench was still on her. The _tark_ caught the cloth bundle, a confused blend of terror and gratitude on her face.

“Wash,” he commanded. “I’ll watch.”

He stood back, leaning on one of the posts by the opening to the alcove.

* * *

Mairwen turned toward the water barrel and clenched her jaws with disgust, her face hidden so that the Orc would not see her disdain. She found a filthy rag on the edge of the barrel, and she soaked and wrung it out several times. Knowing that there was no point in delaying it, she started to clean herself.

Her last opportunity to bathe had been some six days ago. While her circumstances were loathsome, the simple notion of washing was unexpectedly comforting. Soon her skin shone clean and pink from scrubbing, and she tilted her head into the water to wash her dark, tangled hair.

Her cheeks flushed with shame and humiliation when she dipped her hands lower to wash between her thighs. The act caused the Orc Captain to emit a quiet, raspy growl where he stood leaning with his arms crossed. His eyes had grown hooded and moist. She just closed her eyes and washed as thoroughly and quickly as she could. When she was as clean as she was like to get, she wrung her hair out and then hugged herself protectively before speaking.

“I’ve finished,” she said, the chill in the chamber setting her teeth to chattering.

Gorbag advanced on her slowly, circling her and inspecting her critically.

“Good. Ya don’ smell like that plant shit anymore.”

Pointing at the fabric bundle, he ordered her to dress.

She did so gratefully, pulling a threadbare but reasonably clean tunic on. It was a long sleeved gray-green men’s tunic with an old, musty smell, as if it had been forgotten in some chest for years upon end. Likely looted by some Orc raiding party, expecting treasure in whatever chest they had stolen, but finding that it was a clothing chest, instead. The Orc Captain then produced a worn leather belt that she cinched around her waist. There were no shoes, and she did not ask for any. There were no underthings, which was profoundly distressing. She made sure not to flinch when he grabbed her by the arm this time and jostled her to another chamber that was to be her place, he said. Her swollen face was enough incentive.

* * *

Time had ceased to exist almost instantly after her arrival to the Land of Shadow. The land outside of the window in the Tower always seemed dark, the air fuming with putrid stenches. The omnipresent blanket of clouds allowed for no sunlight. The clouds would sometimes light up with the color of fire, accompanied by claps like thunder, but Mairwen knew that it was nothing as natural as a thunderstorm.

There was vile, dark sorcery here, an ancient and unnatural evil that she had only ever heard about in the form of whispered stories. Gray ashes swirled about in the air at all times. Screeches of nightmare beasts and hordes of Orcs even invaded her dreams, giving her little peace from the terrible realm in which she was imprisoned.

It felt to Mairwen like she had spent a lifetime here with the vile Orc Captain, when in truth she had only been imprisoned in the Tower of Cirith Ungol for little more than a moon’s turn. She had quickly learned not to ask for freedom. She had learned that one day as she had been mourning her past life in a corner that had been designated as her place. When Gorbag had found her sobbing, curled up on the filthy leather mattress that served as her bed, he had demanded to know why. When she had told him and asked that he free her, he had backhanded her so viciously that it rendered her unconscious. Upon waking, she had to spit out a bloody chip from a broken tooth. Her face had been swollen for quite some time, and she hadn’t been able to eat. It had apparently been a very satisfactory solution in the Orc Captain’s mind since it _did_ stop her whining. After that, Mairwen took great care not ask him anything of the sort again. It wasn’t like she really believed that he would free her, but desperation had demanded that she asked.

At first, she wasn't sure what the Captain needed her in the Tower for. She had feared what she had always been told—Orcs raped, maimed, killed, and ate Man-flesh. Apart from his blows when she displeased him, he hadn’t made any advances to claim her body. Oh, she had seen the look in his eyes often enough and it made her skin crawl with terror.

She was not a maiden and had served in a regiment that had been almost exclusively male, so she was well acquainted with lecherous stares of that sort. It seemed a look that was universal to males of all races. The difference was that soldiers would usually not act upon the urge, and if they did, they would most likely want the consent of the woman who had caught their eye. She knew that the Orc Captain didn’t give a fig about something as mundane as permission. She had felt certain that he would rape her.

Instead, he had quickly started to bark orders at her like he did with his subordinates. She was made to sweep, clean various bits of armor, scour chainmail, mend leather and clothes, bring him this and that like she was a dog trained to fetch. It seemed thoroughly strange to Mairwen that he would snatch one of her kind just to have a servant. Wars had been started for less, she knew, but she also knew that she was no one of importance. Even if she had been, she thought with a sigh, Middle-Earth was on the eve of a Great War, and she was probably assumed to have perished during the assault on Osgiliath. That was to say if anyone even remembered her.

The truth of it was that she was poor and from the lower echelons of society. Her father had been a butcher and very fond of the drink. While he had never been cruel when inebriated, his meager wages were thinned by his need for cheap ale dregs. Her mother, a quiet woman with the lines of a hard life etched into her face, had been a herbal healer of sorts, providing people like themselves with potions, salves, teas and poultices. She was well-visited, granted, but the people who needed her aid were just as poor. Payment was often a small sack of grain or a scraggly dead hen, feathers and innards still in place. It did provide them with food, but there was seldom coin enough for anything else.

Her mother gathered her plants in the alleys of Minas Tirith where they grew out of cracks in the alabaster stone. The areas around municipal privies were also a source of useful weeds. Once in a blue moon, she would venture outside the gates of the city to search for plants that thrived on the wind-swept plains between the White City and Osgiliath. Other times, she would offer to weed a merchant’s garden for free in exchange for the weeds and for a few sprigs of herbs that were used for both culinary and medicinal purposes.

It was her mother who taught Mairwen herbcraft and how to set bones and sew wounds. But some four years ago, when Mairwen was seventeen, a fatal sweating sickness took hold in the level of the White City where they and countless other less-than-fortunate folk eked out their existence. The illness wiped out scores of citizens with death following only a few days behind after the onset of the first symptoms. Mairwen was spared this plague, but her parents were not. Like many others, she had to consign their bodies for burning as was the norm during times of pestilence.

Once the imposed quarantine had lifted, Mairwen had been drafted to serve as a healer for the soldiers of Gondor. She had been moved into communal barracks with others who aided soldiers in the field, and there she had lived until the more skilled and educated healers were slain in battle and she was called into active duty. It had been her sixth battle in Osgiliath when she had been taken. And now, here she was, at the mercy of an Orc whose very purpose in life seemed to be to cause calamity and suffering.

While the Captain had not actually raped her, as she had feared, he was not without the most perverse type of cruelty. On a good day he would let her perform her menial tasks without too much torment as he drank himself into a stupor or squabbled and jeered with other Orcs who visited the Tower chambers. There was a few terrible days when a dark type of light flashed in his eyes like a festering madness, and Mairwen quickly learned that it was a sure sign of torment to come. She had stopped asking why he was punishing her, or what she had done to provoke his ire. Such questions would only enrage him more.

The first time Captain Gorbag had taken the whip to her he had torn her tunic off and scourged her until her back, buttocks and thighs were slick with blood. She had lost her voice due to the sheer amount of her screaming. Orcs on the lower tiers had been privy to her anguish due to the volume of her wailing, and she could hear them mocking her between the unrelenting snaps of his lash. When she was on the verge of passing out, the Captain had finally stopped and, perversely enough, gently carried her to the alcove where she slept. He had pushed her down on her belly and proceeded to mouth her broken skin with his dark lips, suckling and licking the blood out of her lashes. She wanted to scream with the agony when he pushed the tip of his tongue _into_ her wounds, groaning obscenely as the tip of his tongue laved them for every coagulating drop.

Horror had snared her insides when she heard him unbuckle his belt and unlace his breeches. Deep, raspy sounds of enjoyment followed as he furiously pleasured himself over her scourged body. Mairwen sank her teeth into the mattress when she heard him moan lewdly and spill his seed on her back where it burned in her wounds. After that, he just left her there, fetching some Orc to clean her lashes and apply a black salve that smelled oily and bitter.

She had started to feel the heavy burden of hopelessness on her shoulders. A small flicker of hope had been in her mind, but she found that she had difficulty clutching it to herself as time crawled by. She could feel her spirit bending and she knew not when it would break. She only knew that one day it would do so, and _he_ would be the one to break it.

* * *

On this particular day she could hear his furious, raspy cursing before he even reached the midsection of the stairs leading to the Tower chambers. It seemed that something with 'the boys', as he liked to call his regiment, had not gone too well. From his foul blend of Westron and the tongue of Mordor she was able to discern that a handful of the _dalug-hai_ had been _akrûrz_ and started to squabble over the rest of something called _gabhîk_. The rest of it was in such rapid invective in the Dark Tongue that she could not pick out any more individual sounds.

Mairwen could imagine how the squabble had gone, as internal fights seemed to ripple like rings on water amongst these Orcs. Their bloodlust seemed to boil endlessly, simmering just below a surface of tenuous control. It only seemed to take something small to set them off and entire packs would fight ruthlessly with shoves and punches and kicks flying, until the sergeants started to apply the whip. Even then, it could take hours to sort out the anarchy in a single regiment.

She had seen it enough times when she peered out the windows of the Tower, watching the chaos unfold in the regiments even though the individuals were the size of ants from her vantage point. It had actually amused her a few times as she shook her head and chuckled at the bizarre brutishness of Orcs. As she heard Gorbag ascend the stairs, snarling and barking furiously, it wasn’t a mite funny anymore.

She hung her head as the Captain entered with another Orc in tow. Glancing up quickly and then down again, Mairwen recognized the other as another Captain, one named Shagrat who had been there on her first day in the Tower. He was a rather large specimen with gray, mottled skin and a shock of bone- white hair. Shagrat had paid a few visits to Gorbag since that first day; largely ignoring her while they drank, chewed on bread and meat and conversed in their own tongue. Once she had caught a glance of the two captains rutting roughly, one of them bent over a table while the other took his pleasure. She had curled her lip in disgust at the spectacle and sighed with relief that she had not been forced to take part. It happened a handful of times since then and each time she was grateful that she was not included.

Mairwen directed her gaze at Captain Gorbag and immediately regretted it. His fists were opening and closing dangerously as he regarded her. He was panting heavily with exertion and annoyance. There was nothing she could do about it expect to wait for the beating to come. She only hoped that he would leave the whip out of it this time. His fists and kicks were far more preferable, even though he had managed to crack a few of her ribs already.

She was completely unprepared when he suddenly lunged at her swiftly and unexpectedly like a shadow despite the fact that he normally wasn't one of the most inconspicuous of creatures. She heard Captain Shagrat chortle with amusement in the vicinity.

* * *

It hadn't been a good day for Gorbag, and he badly needed to relax. At first, he had planned to quaff a barrel of sour _tarkish_ wine, made of berries and all manners of nastiness but serving his purpose of getting tanked as quick as possible. Drinking himself into a dumb stupor was always relaxing. But then the delicious idea of defiling his prisoner had sprung to his mind after he had sorted out the tedious problem with the drunkards in his regiment. Whipping his underlings and feeling their black blood spatter on his face had made his loins swell. There was nothing that couldn't be solved with a couple of cracks of a well-oiled whip, and his boys had surely learned that today.

He had initially planned to fuck the _tark_ on the first day. But an idea had come to him, such an amusing one that he simply had to try it. It was clear that the _tark_ expected just that, to be fucked mindless by the Orc that had her in his thrall. In his sadistic mind, Gorbag had figured that it would be better to lull her into a false sense of security and let her think that he had no interest in the place between her legs. He had almost fucked her when he whipped her the first time, so grand were the sounds of her agony. Instead, he had taken care of it by yanking his cock over her and spattering her back with his gray seed.

But he could not wait any longer. The fury, irritation, and the lust that had ignited from whipping his soldiers had culminated in an almost painful sense of arousal that made his cock strain painfully against his leathers. He had even declined when one of his sergeants had offered to suck him off, and his cock had throbbed with disappointment. The thing felt like it was about to split open lengthwise with how horny he was. It was time to show his _tark_ her true lot in life.

The _tark_ actually thought that he would simply slap her around again—it was tempting, granted—but the bewildered look on her face when he was suddenly astride her was priceless. Her scent was warm and pure and laced with a delectable tang of fear. Her mouth fell agape in disbelief and it wasn’t until he shoved her legs apart with his knees that she started to scream.

“No...no... please don’t... _Please, no_!”

“Ahh, aye... scream for me, lovely,” he growled thickly at her, his member hardening even more as she started to struggle and hammer at him with her fists.

His clawed fingers brushed against her soft, warm thighs and belly as he yanked her tunic out of his way. Capturing her flailing wrists in one hand, he reached down between them to unlace himself. He nearly came when his cock was free and pressed against her naked hip and she started to sob with terrified panic.

* * *

Mairwen cried in despair as Captain Gorbag forced himself upon her. She had truly started to believe that he didn’t have such interest in her beyond pleasuring himself to her suffering that one time. She had assumed that he simply wanted some human chattel to order around—perhaps to satisfy some egotistical urge to lord power over an enemy. He seemed to prefer to rut with others of his kind, apparently evident in the few times that she had seen Gorbag and Shagrat copulating noisily. In her mind, he preferred his fellow Captain to a human. It had lulled her into a sense of security that at least she would be spared having him inside of her. She could even endure his self-pleasure when it was directed at her if that was what it took.

The sensation of his gnarled, hard member pressing against her flesh was cruel evidence of how wrong she had been. His weight threatened to crush her as he snarled above her, reaching down between them to guide himself into her. Since he hadn’t disrobed beyond unlacing his breeches, the random bits of armor that adorned him jabbed painfully at her body. However, that discomfort became insignificant when he impaled her.

His horrid flesh forced itself into her body, splitting her open with a terrible, ripping agony that very nearly stole the air from her lungs. Gorbag gasped above her as he hilted inside her, rolling his narrow hips and grinding himself into her until she desperately wailed for him to stop, to please please _please_ stop. Mairwen feared that her hips would split clean in two as he started to move, thrusting roughly, his sallow eyes glazed over with sick rapture. Her misery and pain came out in trembling whimpers as the Orc Captain continued to violate her.

Releasing her wrists, he grasped her throat and his black claws pressed into the sensitive flesh. Mairwen’s hands flew up to dislodge his fingers, but it was hopeless. He did not throttle her, but used his grasp as leverage as he continued, holding her body still for his use. Her tormented gaze fell on Captain Shagrat where he sat a small distance away, leering and fondling himself at the spectacle of her rape. Pathetically, she called out to the other Orc for help, at which Shagrat’s eyes rolled back into his head and he yanked himself more furiously. There was no help to be had there. There was no help to be had _anywhere._

Gorbag dislodged his hands from her neck and slid one of them into her hair to wrench her head to the side. He leaned down to her then to slide a rough black tongue along her throat. His breath smelled of death and blood and decay.

“Gon’ fill ya proper,” he grunted into her neck, “Li’l _tark_ whore. Take it an’ love it.”

“Please stop,” she gasped, despondent. “Please, please...”

* * *

The distress of the _tark_ would make Gorbag spend himself faster than he really wanted, he knew. But he knew that he wouldn’t be able to resist it as her soft body writhed under him. Growling fiercely, he started to grind into her faster, harder, relishing the suffering that he knew he was causing her. Her warm little cunt clutched his swollen cock tightly and her agonized cries were so sweet that he bit his own tongue, the black blood oozing out of his mouth and smearing her skin.

His grip on her hair tightened considerably then as he felt his climax approach. He grabbed her naked hip with his other hand, clutching it so hard to keep her hips still that his talons summoned red blood beneath them. With one final punishing thrust that sent the _tark_ into a paroxysm of hysterical screams, he spent himself inside his captive. He twitched and groaned as his seed drained into her unwilling body. Rattling with strain, he collapsed on top of her, his withering cock still inside of her .

* * *

Mairwen simply laid there after the Orc Captain’s movements had halted, her body throbbing with deep pains worse than anything she had ever felt before. As soon as she was able, she started to writhe under him, desperately attempting to buck the Orc’s bulk off. She shoved at his shoulders and dug her nails into his arms, hissing breathlessly for him to get off her. Gorbag seemed to find this amusing and he chuckled languidly but rolled off her all the same. Mairwen flinched in disgust when she felt his softened member leave her body. It left a swath of hurt and repulsive slickness in its wake.

She gathered herself up as much as possible, ignoring the deep aches in her loins as she sat up and drew her knees up under her chin. She could feel the result of his pleasure seep out of her as she moved. Gorbag had tucked himself away and was lacing his breeches anew.

“Beast,” she spat hoarsely, and the Orc Captain turned to look at her with a satisfied grin.

“Vile beast,” she said again. “How could you... beast... filth. _You filth_!”

Not caring that it would earn her another beating, she cried out her agony, loathing and humiliation into her hands.

“I hate you,” she whispered then with a broken voice. “Hate you.”

* * *

Gorbag simply watched her with a sinister smile. Her hatred was delicious and her fury gave her face an alluring glow. Her smooth, white legs were stained with her blood and his spunk. Bruises from their earlier dealings darkened her face and body and his black blood was on her throat. His cock twitched, but remained limp from exhaustion. He simply jerked his chin toward the privy alcove.

“Clean yerself up, _tark_ ,” he told her, and for all of her bitching she got on her feet with some difficulty and limped toward the water barrel.

After calling a few insults after her in his own speech, he turned to his fellow Captain who had spilled his seed on the floor and was stuffing himself back into his breeches. He thumped Shagrat on the back, produced a flask and offered it to him after taking a swallow.

“Fine quim there, mate,” Gorbag told him, watching the _tark_ scrub herself with the gusto of a thing possessed.

His fellow Captain agreed, but declined when Gorbag magnanimously offered him a go at the _tark_ as a gift between Captains. Gorbag snorted, amused, knowing full well why his fellow Captain had refused. It was widely known that Shagrat simply preferred other Orcs as bedmates. True enough, he had fucked his share of Men, Elves, and even Dwarves in his day, but he had always complained of how quickly they would become broken, dead things beneath him.

Gorbag had no such scruples about anything he fucked. He remembered his last Man-whore and how that straw-headed little twink had eventually become a lifeless bag of flesh which, in turn, prompted Gorbag to make a gift of him to some of his sergeants. But he had never had anyone quite like the little _tark_ who was currently rubbing the wet rag between her thighs and uttering small sounds of discomfort. Along with the horror that was so common of her kind when they were face to face with Orc-kind, there was a delicious type of hatred and innate defiance in her eyes. It was enticing.

 _Let’s see how much she can take afore she breaks,_ Gorbag mused to himself. _Let’s see how long it’ll take t’ whip an’ fuck th’ defiance outta her._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Dalug-hai_ \- Group, gang, rabble [collective noun]  
>  _Akrûrz_ \- Drunk [adjective]  
>  _Gabhîk_ \- Wine [noun]
> 
>  _"Sweating sickness"_ is a reference to an unidentified but highly contagious disease that ravaged Europe from the late 1400's to mid-1500's, only to disappear thereafter. Its cause is still unknown to this day. Famous victims include Arthur, Prince of Wales (brother of Henry VIII), Hugh Ynge (Archbishop of Dublin); Henry Brandon (2nd Duke of Suffolk) and his younger brother, Charles Brandon (3rd Duke of Suffolk), the latter two only hours apart. Seems all impressive that I can rattle off these names but really, I don't know anything much about these people beyond that they died of this malady. I've had to research the disease and its history for a class that is extremely boring to those who do not get all hot and bothered about virology. It's been suggested that it was a type of hantavirus ( _Heyman P., Bridson E., Taviner M., and countless others, US National Library of Medicine_ ) but no one knows for sure. End of dork ramble.


	3. Chapter 3

It was a couple of days before Mairwen was able to walk without the deep, stabbing pain that Gorbag’s attentions had left her with. The Orc Captain had been in a rather good mood since, doing whatever nefarious duties that were required of him within the Tower, but there had been no lengthy absences during this time. He would always return after only a few hours, as far as she could tell, so she kept on her toes, ready for another assault or beating... or both.

She had wept, crying out her shame and agony in short snatches until her tears dried and there were no more to be shed. After, she felt a bit unburdened but resentful, disgusted at herself that she would bawl like a child in this manner. She had seen enough blood and suffering that her torment should seem minor in comparison to the lives lost in the ongoing War. But her mind and body could not forget her violation so easily, and the tears that she thought were no more came again. Her self-loathing grew—weeping would not do her any good her situation. In fact, she had seen the Orc Captain regard her tears with sadistic lust when he raped her last, and she quickly connected the dots. Her suffering was paramount for his pleasure. She resolved to do anything she could to abstain from weeping even if (or when) Gorbag fucked her again. She only hoped that she could adhere to this vow.

Gorbag hadn’t made any advances toward her in the couple of days since the rape. Upon returning from his duties, he would simply drink and eat with a fellow Orc or two and play some queer game with some bones with rules that eluded her. He had called her over a couple of times in order to allow the other Orcs to peruse her and envy him for the _tarkizub_ that he had acquired. Their obnoxious brattling followed, spoken in the Dark Tongue and then he had swatted her behind hard and ordered her to bring him and his fellows more ale.

* * *

The day after that, she could feel that the pains inside of her had faded, almost into nothing. Her hips no longer felt broken as she repeatedly scoured a shirt of mail with a stiff, metal-bristled brush, sitting cross-legged on the stone floor. Right after the rape, sitting had been agony, and it had brought a grinding feeling to the bones in her hips when she tried to sit.

So there she sat now, finishing her work with the brush and then sealing the chainmail into a barrel of sand to let the gravel clean what she could not reach. The Orc Captain returned from his daily forays as she was rolling the little barrel back and forth to let the sand do its work. He nodded at her and grinned, and she saw that he was carrying a pot of stew. The slop inside was gray with an oily film covering it. It should have been revolting, but days of gnawing dried meat that had the consistency and taste of tree bark, it smelled heavenly. She knew that there was a possibility that the ingredients included flesh of Men. Her desperate hunger did not allow her to dwell upon that and she greedily gulped down the greasy slop when Gorbag offered her a bowl. He served himself and ate, watching her unabashed gluttony.

But just as she was licking the gritty dregs from the bowl, the Captain pounced on her like a predatory animal, knocking the bowl out of her hands as he yanked her up from the stool where she had been sitting. The crude crockery shattered as it hit the floor, one of the shards embedding itself into her foot as Gorbag jostled her about like a child's plaything.

He wasted very little time in bending her over the table and slamming her face into the splintered wood. Mairwen refused to cry, but she had regained some of her strength since her first violation. She kicked and struggled and squirmed enough that Gorbag, a lanky but strong specimen of Orc-kind, had trouble to get his plan into motion. Snarling with irritation, he grabbed her hair and produced a black, curved blade. The cursed steel danced before Mairwen’s eyes with an ominous obsidian flash.

“ _Tark_ ,” he growled. “See this? Worm about again, and I’ll cut yer hamstrings. Then I’ll fuck ya in every hole ya got. After, I’ll break your arms and toss you to the _snaga_ -rabble downstairs and let them fuck you ‘til you bleed out. Remember, yeah? How excited they were t’ make yer acquaintance?"

He yanked her hair, forcing her back to arch. Mairwen felt the flat of the blade caress her cheek. He brought it close to her eyes then and she could see herself reflected in the black, shiny steel. Her face seemed wraith-like, the color of candle wax with haunted, dark pits for eyes. Gorbag gave her hair another tug.

“So, white-skin. What say you?”

“You.... you wouldn’t...”

He laughed hideously at this, the sound full of insane iniquity.

“You think that’d be my foulest deed, eh? Think again, li’l bitch. Yer my prisoner, and yer in Mordor now. No one’s comin’ to save ya. There ain’t no fuckin’ salvation. I’ll do with ya what I feel like. How much I hurt ya doin’ it is up to you. Piss me off enough, and I _will_ break yer arms an’ legs an’ let th' _snagas_ stuff ya ‘til you beg fer death. Compared to that, why, I might just be th’ tamest fuck you’ve ever had. So, tell me again, _tark_. What say you to that?”

His raw, unhinged savagery was very nearly incomprehensible to her. Even after all her battles and all rumors of how utterly brutal Orcs were, Mairwen had never been able to fathom sadistic madness such as this. Any doubts that she may have harbored about his capability for brutality were being blotted out very fast.

“Do it, then,” she whispered, and Gorbag responded with a purr that was full of hunger.

“I wan’ you t’ ask for it. _Beg_ me t’ fuck ya with all o’ that pretty courtesy o’ yours.”

His gnarled paws clutched her backside, talons digging into the soft, white flesh. He shoved her legs wider apart with his own and pulled her tunic up to her waist to expose her.

Mairwen grimaced with revulsion. She opened her mouth, but sound refused to emerge. Her pride told her that she would _never_ beg him for _that_. But deep down some terrible thing told her that pride was a cheap thing here, in this Land of Shadow, where debauchery and degradation were commonplace, and the notion of excessively cruel punishment was unknown. Yes, pride was a costly commodity, especially if she aimed for survival. When she didn’t respond fast enough, Gorbag seized her hair, wrenched her head back and delivered a hard punch to her kidneys that made her vision go blank for a few moments.

“Beg,” he demanded.

When she was only able to gasp due to the pain, he let her have his fist again, this time between her shoulder blades. It left her coughing and gagging. This time he waited until the fit had abated before repeating his demand, warning her that further silence would go ill for her.

“Beg me t’ fuck you,” he ordered again, his voice more than threatening and full of gravel. “ _Beg._ ”

“Please,” she ground out, only to cough and wince at the ache that his fist had left her with. She swallowed several times, cleared her throat, and closed her eyes. She tried to force her insides to become stone, cold and unfeeling.  
  
But even stone could crumble into dust.

“Please... _please fuck me_. Please.”

Thankfully, that was all it took. She heard him spit and felt him stroke her exposed flesh, smearing her with a spittle-coated paw. Her nails dug into the old wood as he mounted her from behind, leaning over her and crooning Orcish filth into her ear. A sour odor of iron and rot and madness assaulted her nostrils. He groaned as he sank deep into her. The new position made his stiff flesh feel much thicker than it already was as he worked it in and out of her. The invasive pain was there this time as well, but Mairwen was grateful when she realized that it was not nearly as severe as the first time. Her flesh clenched at his intrusion as he first went deep and slow to savor the sensation, then increasing his pace with punishing thrusts that caused his bony hips to hammer her relentlessly.

It was all she could do to just take it, moaning into the table until Gorbag’s claws dug deeply into her and he shouted his completion with a string of Orcish curses and growls. He withdrew from her with a sickening sound and delivered a stinging slap to her backside before she had the chance to right herself. Giving him as venomous a glare that she dared, she stood up and smoothed her tunic down over her trembling thighs. She was bleeding again, she noted dully, and her insides felt awash with his thick, filthy fluids.

As she made her way to the privy alcove to wash his leavings off, the Orc Captain called after her: “Knew from th’ moment I saw ya that you’d beg me fer it. My li’l wanton _tark_ whore!”

His mordant laughter echoed in the chambers. For all of her logic, Mairwen fell to her knees and retched out of pure shame and defeat and the hot agony in her kidneys and back. Her gullet burned with bile as her stomach cramped to expel its contents onto the floor in a stinking puddle of sick. All the Orc Captain did as she vomited was laugh as it was the most amusing thing he had ever laid eyes upon.

* * *

Some days thereafter, Mairwen was absentmindedly regarding the vast, gloomy landscape beyond the Tower in which she was trapped. Clenching the sordid iron bars that traversed the entirety of the window, she stared without really seeing at groups of countless torch-bearing creatures on the plains. Nary more than only specks of light they were, much like fireflies as they scampered about the plains with some evil intent, their voices sometimes rising to a mutual, noxious brattling that sometimes seemed to go on for hours. Though the rabble on the plains weren't aware of Mairwen’s presence in the Tower, she always felt like they were laughing at her.

It only seemed right after a while. She was to be laughed at, she thought, such a weakling in the claws of a most loathsome creature. She was not even able to fight him off in the slightest once that dark urge overtook him. Closing her eyes, she resolved to not dwell on that just now. It was too disheartening to think of her own deplorable weakness.

She thought instead of a soldier whom she had taken as a lover a year ago. He had been gentle and so very kind to her. Sometimes he had spoken of marriage after the War was over. She had smiled, rather amused and fairly certain that he humored her with such talk to keep on her good side and thus continue their little dalliance, but she had said nothing.

A marriage was not a thing that she desired, but she opened her legs to him all the same and he gently slid inside of her while murmuring sweet, meaningless nothings into her dark hair. He was killed a fortnight later; gored by an Orcish pike. She had mourned him and his needless death briefly but the sweating sickness that had claimed her parents and many others whom she had known had desensitized her to death. Additionally, the ongoing War spared no one of its horror, not even inside the massive walls of the White City. Soldiers with eyes wide from pain and missing limbs or bloated corpses black with carrion flies were carted into the City for treatment or death rites. Despite all of his ramblings of marriage, the soldier had been more of a friendly tryst than anything else, after all, and her grief could not last long in a city so riddled with sorrow and fear.

Ironically, she disdained marriage because too often had she seen wives in the thrall of cruel, hideous, drunkard husbands. The union of her parents had been amicable enough, even if they were burdened with the strife of poverty and insobriety. There hadn’t been any violence between them, not as far as Mairwen had witnessed, in any case.

But wives of other men would come to see her mother for treatment, and in time when word spread that Mairwen possessed the skills also, they came to see her with their broken noses, missing teeth, fractured bones, or worse. When she closed her eyes, she could see their mangled faces, black with bruises and despair from being hoodwinked into this false security in which they ended up receiving the brunt of their husband’s ire and his seed when he felt so inclined to crawl between their legs.

Their only lot in life seemed to be to push out red, squalling brats, many of which died young due to the squalor in which they were born. And all the while, they were in the iron grip of their husbands due to absolute patriarchal law, unable to do anything about it unless they toppled over from pure grief and exhaustion or if their husband found some younger filly to ride. If that was the case, the husband would simply leave his aging wife with a brood of snot-nosed urchins that in turn, would eventually make her topple over from grief and exhaustion, as well.

It was beyond depravity that her current situation was nearly analogous to such a thing. Gorbag held her in his thrall, using and tormenting her whenever he wished. And whoring for an Orc was all she could look forward to for the rest of her days.

He had made her beg to fuck him. And she _had_. She had _begged_ to be fucked by one of the most vile, callous miscreants that she had ever encountered. She was thoroughly soiled now, debauched and dirty and completely unlovely. When the words that he had forced upon her had left her lips, something inside of her had started to crack, wanting to shatter into a thousand jagged fragments that would never fit back together again.

* * *

“Oi, white-skin,” Gorbag called for her one day.

Mairwen looked up from where she sat in her alcove, arranging items that she had salvaged from her surroundings. She had carefully asked the captain if she might examine the various crates and chests that were scattered throughout the top tier of the Tower where they dwelled. He had shrugged and told her with a type of Orcish grace that she could do whatever the fuck she wanted with the things that she may find. This had surprised her a little, but she was not about to question this sudden bout of benevolence. She had thanked him and set about her task.

She had examined all items in the chambers closely, rooting among caskets of sour wine, chests of clothes and crates of jars, trinkets, leathers, moth-eaten bolts of cloth and a handful of books written in some queer language that she could not read—not that she could read her own tongue, but she could recognize the shape of letter marks, and these were unknown to her. She had not found any weapons (a directive set by a desperate subconscious set on defense, even if she hadn’t the skill to wield them).

There were sealed clay jars of foodstuffs that revealed pickled olives from the South and a few others that held tiny, translucent pickled onions. Another jar held small fish pickled in some vinegar concoction; the smell of it was so foul that even Gorbag snorted at it. He took the jar from her and hurled it out between the bars of one of the Tower windows, laughing uproariously when furious roars and curses drifted up to him from the Orcs on the lower tiers as they were spattered with the stinking mush. Even Mairwen had smiled a little, at that.

She had also found stone-hard planks of dried salmon in a leather package, pouches of dried apples, pears and peaches and dried mushrooms that had once been strung upon a length of twine to dry, but now they resembled balls of twine with some mushrooms mixed in. Her search also revealed a few bags of nuts and roots and several lidded baskets of rotten fruit that were black and shriveled and fuzzy with fungal growth. Her mouth had watered when she found two glass jars of honey, the waxy honeycomb still suspended in the thick golden liquid. Honey was something she had only tasted once or twice in her life, as it was quite an expensive item in the White City. Well, expensive for her ilk, anyway.

She nearly squealed in joy when she uncovered a small box that held a dozen blue glass vials filled with dried herbs. The marks on the faded labels meant little to her, but she recognized quite a few of the scents as she sniffed the contents, identifying them as culinary herbs. Another tiny chest revealed little vials of pink-tinted water which turned out to be rosewater. The same chest yielded two bars of rock-hard, tawny-colored soap. She had never had the luxury of washing with soap in her life, and how ironic it was that she should be given such a privilege in her current reality.

Gorbag watched her without comment as she gingerly carried her little treasures to her alcove, arranging them neatly against the stone wall by the leather mattress upon which she slept. A forlorn thought came to her as she was turning a clay jar in her hands. Mairwen found herself wondering how many lives had been extinguished on account of these items. She felt certain that many of the items came from traveling traders that made their way across the land in caravans laden with their wares and oftentimes, their families. She knew that those families had probably been slaughtered for the sake of goods that eventually just ended up wasting away in Orcish towers and dens since the Orcs had little taste for the fare of Man (though any spirits brewed by her kind would be swilled quickly, even as the Orcs cursed at the fruity nastiness). Her shoulders sagged a little at the thought of the fate of these traders, and thinking of it made her tired, so very tired.

So she just sighed and went to Gorbag where he was in another chamber across the anteroom. He smiled, mottled teeth gleaming, where he sat on the floor among lumpy leather cushions, reclining casually in front of a brazier of glowing hot coals. A few jugs of ale were scattered about. The Orc Captain motioned for her to come closer to him and Mairwen approached quickly, if not a little bit warily. She gasped as she reached him and he yanked her down to him, but he simply pulled her into his body so that her back was flush with his chest and his long, leather-clad legs sprawled on either side of her body. He offered her a jug, and she gulped down the strong ale, if only to deaden her insides in anticipation for the inevitable assault.

But Gorbag simply combed his claws through her dark hair with a deep purr rumbling in his chest, sniffing the tresses as he did so. She relaxed a little against him, the warmth of the ale spreading through her limbs.

“Yer hair’s so soft,” he murmured. “Dark an’ soft.”

Mairwen didn’t know how to respond to that, so she stayed silent until Gorbag reached for a jug of ale. The draught was strong on his sour breath when he spoke again, snaking an arm around her chest to press her closer.

“Tell me,” he said, “What did ya do before this shitty War?”

His manner was so unexpected that she did not comprehend his question at first. But she found her voice quickly.

“I was... I am an herbalist.”

“Eh? ‘erbalist, is it? Watcha doin’ in battlefields, then?”

“I aided the soldiers of Gondor,” she told him, a little more at ease now. “In the field. When they were injured, I gave them potions, herbal remedies, poppydrops for...”

“Har!” The Orc Captain exclaimed, making her start a little. “ _That’s_ why you stank like you’d been rollin’ ‘round with some Elves in th’ woods. Full o’ forest stink, so ‘ere I thought they ‘ad brought me some _tark_ what whored for Elves.”

He laughed loudly, and even Mairwen chuckled. She had never even seen an Elf, but she had heard of their ethereal beauty, pointy slender ears; eyes like stars and hair like the finest silver. They were so slender and light that they left no footprints in snow nor the finest dust, and this had given her a mental image of some unsettling hovering being. The thought of bedding one was queer and not a little frightening. If anything, they seemed like some type of specters, if the stories were any indication. Specters of great beauty, granted, but specters all the same. Beings that seemed to simultaneously traverse this world and the world beyond.

“I don’t think that I’d like to fuck an Elf,” she told him and realized that she had used the foul word that he liked to use for rutting.

Did it matter, though? she thought. No. It did not matter one _fucking_ bit.

“Ha! Knew I liked ya,” he said.

They stayed silent for a while then. The only sounds in the chambers were Gorbag’s continuous purr and a faint hissing of the glowing coals in the brazier. There was a constant Orcish susurrus in the background, emerging from the lower tiers of the Tower and from the plains, but by now it was so commonplace that Mairwen hardly noticed it. She almost dozed until one of Gorbag’s hands dipped into the wide neckline of her tunic. She stiffened when his claws brushed against the soft skin of her small breasts; the callous pads of his fingers fingering a nipple briefly. It pebbled under his touch.

She let out a shuddering sigh of revulsion, and obscenely, a treacherous noise of almost-pleasure. It had been so long since she had known gentleness that a soft caress felt like water would feel for a parched throat.

Gorbag laid his cheek against hers, and she could feel him smile.

“What’re these dugs for, anyway?” he asked her, and she frowned at the bizarre question.

“Well,” she began, “Feeding young, I suppose.”

The Orc Captain laughed at that and said: “Hah, I know _that_. I smelled a diff’rence in yer scent when I touched th’ point of it. T’was a scent of rut. Gone now, though. Have Men touched ya like that? Did ya like it?”

Mairwen did not like this line of questioning. Even through the carefree feeling of the strong ale had already started to cloud her mind, she was wary and did not want to give him ideas. But she knew that he would have his answers one way or another.

“Some did,” she admitted, “And... yes, it can be... pleasant.”

“Huh,” was all he said.

Her insides twined with fear when his other hand snaked itself under the hem of her tunic and between her legs. His gnarled fingers pressed against her sensitive flesh, brushing against the soft downy hair there. But he simply held his hand firmly against her without prodding her flesh further.

She felt his member grow dangerously stiff against the small of her back, but he made no move to assuage his need. He just let his hand rest against her, flush against the place that he had violated so brutally. She relaxed slightly.

“Yer always so warm down there,” he growled then. “Do ya like it when Men touch ya there? When they fuck ya?”

“Yes,” she whispered tremulously. She felt sure that he would force himself upon her now.

But he removed his hand and laid it on her belly instead and said nothing else. His other hand remained still on her breast, and his scarred cheek rested against hers. After a short while, he was snoring.

Mairwen found his behavior outlandish and so utterly queer in juxtaposition to his usual treatment of her. His sudden gentleness awakened feelings in her that had been so starved that she thought them dead and gone. But the terrible fact was that he had hurt her so very, very badly, and here she found herself craving more gentle touches, no matter if they came from this creature.

She knew that he would hurt her again; there was no doubt about that. She hated the Orc Captain with a passion that she had not thought possible, and yet, his soft touch had comforted her. The confusion of it all culminated in her mind and she wept silently and carefully as Gorbag snored. When no more tears came, she put her head on his shoulder and slept, exhausted and thoroughly tormented in the arms of her captor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Tarkizub_ \- My human [possessive noun]


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

Mairwen awoke the next morning to empty chambers. In truth, she wasn’t sure if it was morning, since sunlight as well as the light of the moon were always absent. Sometimes, she thought that she could discern variations in the shadowed lands outside of the Tower, the shades seemingly ranging from dark to not-as-dark. But there was no way to be sure. The churning sky was ever blackened here, ablaze with gruesome flashes that were the color of blood and flame and piss. The air always smelt of ashes and death, the smell so dense that sometimes she could feel the _taste_ of dead things embedded in her tongue.  
  
And somewhere in the distance, deep below the buzzing of Orcish activities on the scorched plains of Gorgoroth, rumbled the arcane monstrosity that contaminated this land, defiling even such a free thing as the sky and shutting out something as natural as the celestial bodies that watched over them all.

She remained in her bed for some time then, staring at the stone ceiling above her and remembering the smell of sun-warmed skin and the way little spots of sunlight would dance on the surface of the numerous man-made ponds in the city. Lunar light was similarly spectacular as the white, swollen face of the moon painted everything in the secret shades of night.  
  
At full moon, the pallid stone of Minas Tirith would gleam with a soothing type of blue ghostlight and the air would be clearer somehow, bereft of the odor of the daily lives of its citizens. It mattered little if the moon was waxing or waning, its gentle luminescence had always seemed cleansing and forgiving; a gentle embrace that washed away every adversity of the day before, leaving nothing except the calm of the night. But neither the light of the sun or the moon could reach her here and purge her body of the corruption that would always stain her.

Mairwen quickly abandoned her thoughts when they turned dark, as they oft did as of late. Thoughts of her past life served only to weaken her, she knew. All she could really do was to survive and feverishly clutch to that one shred of her true self inside of her, hide it away and not weaken it further. It was her, _her_ , the girl that she had once been, penniless but free and unshackled and beholden to no one, with the smell of dried herbs and flowers on her hands and dirty cobblestones beneath her bare feet.  
  
It was her mother and father and the smell of Pelennor fields in the spring as the fresh grass sprouted anew. It was her past lovers when they were inside of her. It was the White Tree of Minas Tirith that she had only seen once and the gratitude of a fellow human when she was able to cure them of their ailment. She could not let this dismal place or her captor tear away this last vestige of what she had once been. Oh, she could feel it keening like a wounded animal for every day that crawled by in her dark, violent prison. She could feel it _bleed_. But even maimed and damaged and deformed, she cared not, as long as it remained with her. It was the one, fragile inch of her that this place could not, _would not,_ have.

* * *

She woke up a second time after some untold amount of time had passed, bundled in the musty furs that Gorbag had given her. Mairwen had not even realized that sleep had claimed her again and she yawned, pushing away the last fragments of the thoughts that had haunted her earlier. The Tower chambers were quiet and the Orc Captain still hadn’t returned, for which she was grateful. It gave her some measure of peace, a small opportunity to relax before he returned. Such a thing hadn’t been easy even before she had been taken—peace was hard to find in times of war.

Stretching and tossing the furs aside, she grabbed one of her precious bars of soap. It held no fancy smells such as the ones that she had smelled on merchant’s wives or the gentry, but the soap did its job and did it well, so she really couldn’t have cared less about such redundancies. Besides, while Gorbag wanted her clean, he had made it clear that she was not to use any “pansy Man-stink” when he had discovered the little vials of rose water that she had salvaged. The soap was acceptable, he allowed, because it did not mask the natural scent of her body.

Once in the the privy chamber, she pulled her tunic off and relieved herself on the privy. She secretly hoped that her leavings would splash on some nasty Orc below who was stupid enough to stand close to the privy shafts, wherever they drained. The thought was a thoroughly unsanitary and disgusting one, she knew, but it made her snicker all the same.  
  
When she finished, she started to wash her body thoroughly, using her stained tunic as a scrubbing cloth, soaping herself and the garment in the process. She even submerged her dark hair and lathered it, knowing that she’d have to spend some time picking the tangles out. After she was as clean as she was like to get, she finished scrubbing her tunic and wringing it out.

Thankfully, the water was somewhat clean, as Gorbag had ordered some of his underlings to change it every few days. Mairwen had scratched a line into her leather mattress for every time she awoke until the water was changed anew. Knowing enough of counting not to be swindled in her old life, she had deduced that the water was changed every five to six days. She had decided that her sleep cycle would serve just fine as a primer in lieu of celestial indications of the passage of time. She had felt pitifully refreshed after her little calculations, as if her mind had craved such exercise.

Returning to her little alcove, she hung her tunic on a hook to dry and perused a few other garments that she had been able to salvage in the chambers. Deciding on a pair of breeches that had been made to fit a young man, she pulled them on and then shrugged into a dark brown tunic. Gorbag had watched her when she had found the breeches, simply telling her: “They better come off right n’ quick when I say.”

She had found about a dozen female garments, mostly dresses with bodices and skirts that ranged in styles from peasant to lower gentry. Mairwen hadn’t even tried them on, knowing that they would accentuate femininity in a way that made her uncomfortable. She didn’t want to wear anything that could be interpreted as suggestive by her captor. So instead, she had torn most of the female garments into strips which came in handy when her moon blood was on her.

The Orc Captain, while very fond of the scent and taste of her blood when it was fresh, did not like her woman’s blood. He stayed well away from her during the days when she was so afflicted, telling her that the blood smelled of death and corpses. Mairwen was grateful for the respite, but she wondered why this would bother him since she had heard enough of his discussions with other Orcs to know that rutting and eating the dead was not a rare thing. She could not bear to think about such acts for long though, assuming only that he had placed her in some other category in his indecipherable, gruesome mind.

Dressed and somewhat clean, she examined her little hoard of foraged wares. Her stomach growled for some sustenance that wasn’t Orcish fare. She selected a pouch of nuts, a jar of olives and a handful of dried apple slices. She opened the clay jar and fished out four olives that were the size of quail eggs and found that they were stuffed with some fiery type of vegetable bits that she had never tasted before. She liked it though, the spice and saltiness spreading pleasantly in her mouth and burning her tongue slightly.

She ate a bare handful of the little nut kernels, even though they were stale. While the slices of dried apple also had a faded flavor, there was still a pleasing hint of piquant sweetness left in them. When she had finished, her gaze fell longingly on one of the glass jars that held the golden treasure of honey. Wrenching one open, she dipped two fingers into the thick liquid and shoved them into her mouth, quickly and clumsily closing the jar again with her other hand in order to resist the temptation to pour it all down her gullet.

The Orc Captain returned to the chambers just as she was greedily sucking her fingers, tounging underneath her fingernails and the crevices of her cuticles for every little speck of sweetness. She finished quickly and rose when he called for her, not wasting any time in following his voice.

* * *

Gorbag smiled when his little white-skin emerged from her alcove in the sleeping chamber. Her dark mane of hair was moist and tangled and her body smelled clean underneath the Man clothes that she had pulled on. He had decided that he didn’t mind the substance that she cleaned her with, the clumps that she had named ‘soap’. It cleaned the filth off her, and while the scent of her fragrant _tark_ flesh would be fainter for half a day or so, it did not matter much to his keen sense of smell.

However, he detected another scent on her then; there was the smell of Man-foods but also a vaguely familiar sweet scent that was not of her body. It took him a few moments to realize that it was _brûfbag_. An unbidden memory came to him of his younger days, long ago, when he was a young weevil with a low Mordorian rank. He and another young Orc whose name or face he could not recall had found a hive of bees clinging to a dead, gnarled tree. They had entertained themselves with throwing rocks at the round, gray thing. The bees had buzzed around them furiously, but their stingers could not effectively pierce the tough hide of even youngling Orcs. Eventually, they had managed to smash the hive and bring it down at the base of the tree from which it had proudly hung.

Thick, amber-colored grot had oozed out of it slowly, and like the stupid striplings that they were, they had stuck their claws in the mess and scooped it into their maws. The taste of it was so cloying that it left them both gagging and spitting curses. It was then that Gorbag’s comrade had told him that he had heard of this yellow rubbish before, naming it _brûfbag_. Sagely, he proceeded to tell him that _brûfbag_ was made by the bees as they shat, ate the selfsame shit, and shat it out again until it became this piss-colored sticky slime. And not only that, but Men prized _brûfbag_ for its sweetness, gorging themselves on it when they could get their hands on it! Even though they themselves had tasted the stuff, the statement had sent them both into fits of boisterous laughter, cackling wildly at the notion that Men were, in fact, bona fide shit-eaters.

He grinned at the memory and told his white-skin to accompany him to the chamber with the brazier. Its coals were burning warm and bright, being fed daily by some _snaga_ -Orc.

“Come, pet,” he beckoned her. “I wanna teach ya some games… with dice n’ such. An’ let’s get good n’ tanked outta our gourds.”

She nodded at that, some tension leaving her shoulders and he realized that she had probably expected another sort of game. It was true that there was nothing quite like fucking this _tark _, but he was more inclined to get sloshed at the moment. He ordered her to fetch a couple of jugs of ale, Mordorian dregs brewed with roots and mushrooms and Orc spit, but he didn’t think that she needed to know that. While she went to the corner that held a couple of dozen crockery jugs, he rummaged around in a chest nearby for what he was looking for.__

When he returned to the brazier his white-skin was already sitting down, the jugs placed neatly at her side. The glow of the coals gave her otherwise waxen face a fiery glow. She looked up at him, her eyes the color of flint. They brightened a bit when she saw the wooden cups and dice in his hands.

* * *

Mairwen had relaxed a little when she realized that today’s definition of “games” did not entail rape, and when she saw the dice that he was carrying, she could hardly contain her excitement. It had been so long since she played any games, and the notion was somehow comforting. It was something familiar from a life that she might have well lived a century ago.  
  
Gorbag stripped off a few bits of more cumbersome armor until he was clothed in a long sleeveless undertunic and breeches. He tossed the bits of armor into a corner, sat down beside her and scratched his arm absently. There were several large, black scabs there that looked like they had been worried at over and over again. Multitudes of scars in different stages of healing traversed his arms like serpents.

“Th’ manky shits ‘round ‘ere cheat like corsair cocksuckers,” he drawled at her, which made her grin a little.

“Now, white-skin, this game ‘ere is what we call Fib-Goblin.”

He started to explain how the game was played, showing her a pair of wooden cups and multiple dice. She could not contain an excited squeal when she recognized it.

“I know this game!” she exclaimed, but caught herself when she realized that she had interrupted him. But Gorbag simply smirked at her, looking amused, so she continued.

“We call it Liar’s Dice,” she said, touching one of the ivory-colored dice.

She could tell from the tiny striations and the feel of the objects that they were carved from bone. Plucking up five of the little cubes, she made sure that the amount of dice in her palm matched the number of fingers of her hand.

“Every player starts with five dice,” she began, remembering and then describing to the Orc Captain how her kind played this game that he named Fib-Goblin.

“Aye, that ‘bout covers it, I’d say,” Gorbag told her when she grew silent again. “Where’dya learn t’ play?”

Mairwen grew pensive as she remembered, fingering the dice that she was holding. She spoke more than she had intended to, but her memories seemed to have a voice of their own.

“When I was called into duty, I was housed in barracks with other field-aides. We were left there to await orders once we were needed in battle. An older healer taught some of us this game. He was really adept with dice, cards, sleight of hand... and such.”

She closed her eyes, picturing the mischievous but kind face of the older healer. His eyes had been green and freckles traversed his nose, and a beard like a great carrot-colored caterpillar had cradled the entirety of his lower face. He had died barely a moon’s turn after teaching dice to those who would learn it. Mairwen pushed that thought to the back of her mind, and continued. Gorbag listened intently, his head cocked to the side.

“He could finagle a coin from you even as you were staring right at your coin purse. Right there, in front of you, on the table! But he always gave it back, after. And he could summon a little flower from his palm! He taught us all dice, but he always won if he played with us. Naturally. I saw the soldiers in Osgiliath play it as well when there was a… a lull. They weren’t as good as he was. I’m not very good at it, either.”

“Well, it ain’t a good game fer only two players anyway, I think.”

The Orc Captain took a swig from one of the jugs and let out a belch, prompting her to have some, as well. She accepted the jug from him and drank the bitter, strong brew. She was acutely aware of his sickly eyes on her, from her white hands where they clutched the jug to her throat when it worked to swallow the ale. She downed the liquid quickly and wiped her mouth.

“Do you know any other games? Some that may be better for two players?” Mairwen ventured, if only to keep his mind off the painful games that he liked to play with her flesh.

“I can teach ya Knucklebones,” he said. “Or Hound’s Teeth, The Great Red Eye—that’s played with stones painted special, so ‘at they look like—”

An unusually loud commotion suddenly erupted from the level below the Tower chambers, cutting off the Orc Captain’s words and making Mairwen jump. Gorbag flew up, hunching, and she could immediately tell that the interruption had enraged him. She shrank away from him, fearing that he would take his anger out on her. But instead, he yanked her up by the arm and growled, but did not make a move to backhand her or otherwise hurt her.

“What th’ shit is this bloody caterwaulin’,” he swore as the clamor grew louder below. “Can’t get a fuckin’ moment to toss dice an’ get sloshed without th’ _snaga_ -rabble havin’ some pissin’ contest…”

Mairwen scrambled to keep up with him as he pulled her with him, through the oaken door and down the stairs to the level below where a substantial skirmish was in progress. The first thing she could discern in the bedlam was an impossibly small Orc, no larger than herself, launching itself onto the back of a monstrous specimen and sink it’s teeth into the thick, sinewy neck.

Yowling followed; the bite was not enough to kill, but the larger Orc was frantically trying to dislodge his small attacker like a dog would try to shake off fleas. The rest was simply a mass of Orcish rage and brutality. Metal clashed against metal. Fists and claws were flying, connecting with armor and leather and flesh and inky blood spattered here and there. Furious swearing and savage howls and pained yelps created an Orcish cacophony than made her want to cover her ears.

Miserably, she glued herself to the Orc Captain’s side, her eyes wide with terror. It was morbid, she knew, but to her reasoning, it was better to deal with a familiar horror than a horror unknown.

Grabbing her, Gorbag shoved her behind him and to the base of the stairs again where no melée was taking place. She pressed herself against the wall by the stairs as the Orc Captain seized a obsidian-bladed sword from a nearby weapons rack and lurched forward and roared; his words nearly indiscernible due to his insane rage.

“ _What_ in the pissin’ name of th’ Eye is _goin’ on_ down ‘ere?!”

Without waiting for any type of response, Gorbag lunged like a lanky predator at two Orcs nearby, skewering one through the bowels (Mairwen could smell it shit itself) and sinking his sword into the neck another, cutting from the place where its throat connected with its shoulder, almost down to its opposite armpit. The dying bellows of their comrades seemed to get the attention of most of the combatants.

Mairwen could see the blood-light fade from the eyes of the Orcs as they regarded their furious superior. It almost dissipated like mist, the participants blinking stupidly until Gorbag barked at them again. The sword was still clutched in his paw, the blade smeared with obsidian blood.

“ _Skai!_ What in th’ fuck is this cock-up ‘ere? You lot _tryin’_ to do th’ Enemy a favor, yeah? Thin out th’ ranks a bit, eh?”

A small, gangrel Orc grunt stepped forward, brown of skin with a stripe of greasy, black hair traversing its head. It cast its pale, rheumy eyes downward, its shoulders sagging and the points of its ears wilting in submission.

“Cap’n” it whined, it’s voice pinched and scratchy, “Th’ scoutin’ party ya sent out th’ other day came back. They’d found sum rangers outta Ithilien or summat, carryin’ all kinda plunder. Fancy bows, daggers, shiny stuff, and oh!—fresh _tark_ meat; from a youngling, tender an’ meaty.”

Mairwen winced at the thought of some young man hanging somewhere in the Tower, butchered and strung up like a side of beef. The Orc licked his chapped lips before he continued.

“They was sayin’ ‘at, uh, th’ swag was not fer us, since we wasn’t out wif ‘em. But we ain’t ‘ad any fresh meat in ages! So… we was sayin’... just sayin’, we should _all_ share a bit o’ the loot. Fair’s fair, innit?”

Some Orcs nodded their heads in agreement, while others remained still as if to see what outcome the confrontation would have. Others bared their teeth and hissed in anger, them presumably members of the scouting party who wanted to keep their ill-gotten goods to themselves.

The grunt lowered its milky eyes then as Gorbag regarded it with annoyance.

“I sure didn’t hear ya volunteerin’ when th’ scouts went out. An’ now you wan’ a share o’ loot you ‘ad no hand in acquirin’, is it? You tell me how ‘at makes _any_ kinda sense, you stupid shit.”

The Orc grunt’s lips parted into a small, spitless snarl and he lifted his head slightly to stare his superior in the eyes, the pale eyes flashing and unblinking. Mairwen saw the challenge there immediately, and she knew that this type of rebellion would not end well for the grunt. Oh yes, she knew exactly how such cheekiness was dealt with in the Tower of Cirith Ungol.

“Aye, I ‘ad no hand in gettin’ it, ‘tis true. If ‘at be the case, what ‘bout _‘er,_ then?”

The grunt jabbed a clawed finger in Mairwen’s direction, but Gorbag didn’t even glance back, keeping his seething stare on his brash subordinate. The Orc grunt let its lower jaw jut out defiantly and tilted its chin up at the Captain. The rest of the rabble had fallen deathly silent.

“You didn’t procure ‘at piece o’ _tark_ cunt fer yerself, did ya, Cap’n?” the grunt sneered. “Nar, th’ boys dumped ‘er right in yer lap, you did _nothin’_ , an’ now you stuff ‘er slit all th’ time, dontcha? We’ve all heard ‘er screamin’ and hollerin’ when ya stick it to ‘er.”

“Oh-ho,” Gorbag said, his voice dropping to a dangerous growl. “This ‘ere’s a discussion of prerogative, then. The _tark’s_ battle-spoils, to be sure. But I’m th’ fuckin’ _Captain_ ‘ere, an’ if I tell th’ troops to bring me a plaything, they bring me a bloody plaything. When _yer_ Captain, you can ‘ave _tark_ cunt fetched an’ you can fuck it ‘til you puke yer black guts out. But you _ain’t _a Captain, are ya?”__

The Orc grunt did not have a chance to respond as Gorbag tossed his sword aside and pounced, dropping the smaller Orc with a hard tackle that sent it sprawling face down on the gray slate floor. The Orc Captain descended on it and straddled its back, clutching its pointy, long ears, using the grip to repeatedly smash its head into the gray stone. After a few ferocious slams, the slate below its brow was dappled with glistening black blood.

Mairwen saw to her astonishment that the grunt was still very much alive, if only dazed and struggling weakly under his superior. Its forehead was in shreds and its nose seemed nearly smeared all over the lower half of its face in a ruin of blood and cartilage. Gorbag ordered a few nearby Orcs to hold it down.  
  
Obedience established once again, they did as they were told without protest and a handful of Orcs of different sizes clasped the flailing limbs of the heaving dissenter. The Orc Captain drew a black dagger from the belt of an Orc who was kneeling on the grunt’s arm. With it, he swiftly hacked through the belt that secured the grunt’s breeches and then yanked them down.

“Get ‘is ass in th’ air,” he snarled, and the dissenter’s waist was lifted aloft by rough paws.

Within moments, Gorbag had unlaced himself and shoved his entire length into the grunt’s bowels with a grimace of obvious discomfort. There had been nothing to slicken his entry, and Mairwen winced at the scene; the whole spectacle cruelly reminiscent of her own plight.The smaller Orc howled in agony at the intrusion, barking and screeching as Gorbag started to grind himself into the grunt with punishing thrusts. Black blood started to drip down from where their bodies connected roughly, the little inky droplets splashing on the floor between their knees.

Mairwen turned her face away, feeling ill. In some terrible way, she felt sorry for the smaller Orc, for she knew exactly how ruthless the Captain’s punishments could be. It was utterly queer that there was a twinge of sympathy in her heart for the little grunt. She wasn’t altogether sure that any living thing deserved such treatment.

* * *

Gorbag withdrew his unspent cock from the whimpering Orc after a few moments. It wilted immediately, wet only with the black blood of the grunt and most likely some of his own, as well. He hadn’t spilled his seed into the ass of the dissenter.This was about sending a message, and not about fucking; there was not even any pleasure for him in the act.  
  
The little pisspot had forced him to assert his dominance, and he was going to make sure that punishment continued. He stuffed his limp, bloodied cock away and closed his breeches. Placing a heavy boot between the grunt’s shoulder blades, he went on to address the entirety of the Orcish spectators around him.

“Share of th’ plunder, he says,” Gorbag shouted belligerently. “Well, _he’s_ th’ plunder now. Fuck ’im ‘til he worms ‘bout no more. Once th’ li’l shit’s dead, ya can ‘ave all th’ fresh meat you want off ‘is bones.”

Gorbag removed his booted foot from the grunt and spat a glob of phlegm at its head.

“An’ if I hear any more bitchin’ from any one o’ ya blighters ‘bout fuckin’ fair this an’ fair that an’ whinin’ ‘bout loot what ain’t yers‘, there’ll be more fuckin’ an’ meat to be had.”

Upon realizing that the dissenter was now fair game, several Orcs started to snarl and elbow their way to their Orcish victim, furiously tugging their cocks out to be the first after their Captain to fuck the uppity little pillock. When the Orc grunt started to howl again, Gorbag jerked his chin with approval and turned around, striding over to his white-skin and beckoning for her to follow him.

His name for her was appropriate, but even more so at the moment. She was bone-white, looking not a little bit sick and terrorized. Despite it all, she clasped his arm when he approached, her flint-colored eyes wide and the scent of fear pouring off her like a moist mist. If his cock hadn’t been chafed to shit from punishing the little rebellious _snaga_ -Orc, her scent would have made him want to push her down on the stairs and fuck her in full view of the rabble. Well, there would always be other opportunities, should he wish to have an audience.

“Come on,” he grunted. “Let’s go an’ get shit-faced, fer true now. Shouldn’t be anymore interruptions.”

* * *

Mairwen nodded, not letting go of Gorbag’s arm as he ushered her toward the staircase. The unhinged malice of this place and the blackest torment that reigned here made her feel that her sanity was not such a sure thing at all. How many horrors could a mind endure before it started to crumple into madness, shedding layers of lessening sanity like an onion until only a tiny dark pith of lunacy remained? Sometimes, she wondered if such a madness wouldn’t be preferable. Would insanity allow a mind peace from its surroundings?

The grunt’s piercing yowls of pain were full of torment. A large Orc, easily twice the dissenter’s size, was violating it with punishing thrusts that brought forth more black blood. Another gangrel villain was tugging on the Orc grunt’s member none too gently, bringing it to a semi-erect state, but also rendering it torn and bleeding from sharp claws.

Mairwen realized that this was probably to be her fate one day when Gorbag tired of her or she really managed to enrage him. It frightened her to think that she could be fucked and torn and bitten before death came to embrace her and chase away the agony. How queer it was that this little Orc would likely be her brother in death one day.

Just as the Orc Captain led her to ascend the stairs, another Orc barred their way. Gorbag’s body tensed immediately, ready to teach this one a lesson as well. His shoulders bunched dangerously and he hunched, preparing to pounce and savage this intruder, weapon or no weapon. But just as suddenly, his body relaxed and a wide grin stretched his dark lips.

“Well, bugger me sideways,” Gorbag exclaimed, laughing, “Captain Morthauk! Ain’t seen ya in, what, three years? You nasty ol’ codger, watcha doin’ in th’ Tower?”

He thumped his fellow Captain amiably on the shoulder and the Orc Captain named Morthauk responded in kind.

“Wotcher, _kranklûk _,” Captain Morthauk chuckled, showing a set of needle-like teeth that seemed to battle for space in his black gums.__

Mairwen slowly slid behind Gorbag, hands still clutching at his tunic. She truly felt like a child of three or four, hiding shyly behind a parent. But she did feel safer this way when she wasn’t in the line of sight on an unknown Orc, even if safety was a complete illusion in this place. She had seen the way some of the Orcs on this level regarded her as Gorbag taught the unfortunate little Orc a lesson. Luckily, such interest had vanished quickly when the Orc Captain declared open season on the Orc that had defied him.

“Was ordered to inspect th’ camps along Morgai,” Morthauk continued, “What th’ fuck fer, I’ve no clue. Bunch o’ drunk wankers, yankin’ their dicks. I left some o’ me fellows in charge over at th' Gate. Thought I’d stop by an’ see what kinda devilry ye’ve been up to.”

Morthauk jerked his chin toward the mess of Orcs who were currently engaged with shoving their members in any available orifices. It seemed that some of them had abandoned waiting for their turn with the Orc grunt, deciding instead to copulate with each other in one manner or another. Most had just moved off without an interest in either, now conversing casually and eating. Others had stretched out along the walls, seemingly drifting off to sleep.

“Nice work, that. With th’ li’l shit. Gotta keep th’ buggers in line. Most of ‘em don’t know th’ Great Eye from a fuckin’ hole in th’ ground.”

His blood-red gaze suddenly spotted Mairwen where she was, half-hidden behind Gorbag’s bulk.

“Oi, mate. What the fuck is _that?_ ”

She blanched and looked down, her knuckles turning white as she gripped Gorbag’s dirty sleeve.

“That’s _tarkizub_. Let’s go upstairs an’ wet our whistles, an’ I can tell ya all ‘bout it.”

Mairwen followed the two Captains upstairs. As they ascended, she could hear the groans and howls of the Orc grunt growing weaker as his strength poured out of him. It didn’t seem to matter much to his attackers as they simply kept rutting, even as life was slowly ebbing out of their victim. She knew that soon enough, the little Orc’s agony would be over. There would be no more whippings, no more beatings, and no more rape. He would forever escape the Tower of Cirith Ungol.

She felt profoundly irritated with herself for not simply fighting the Orc Captain until he bestowed the same fate upon her. Anger came then, knowing that she was too cowardly to do so, too weak and too frightened of the pain that these creatures would inflict on her. Pathetic as it was, she would endure Gorbag’s raping and violence any day rather than having it multiplied hundredfold.

Any sympathy that Mairwen might have felt for the little Orc dissipated when she realized that life had finally drained out of the creature. There was no compassion in her anymore, no pity, not even relief that there was one less Orc for the world to contend with. All that was left in her was envy.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Brûfbag_ \- Brûf (insect; ant), Bag (shit), lit. insect shit, bug shit  
>  _Kranklûk_ \- Brother (noun)  
>  _Skai_ \- Exclamation of irritation, etc., much like "gah!"
> 
>  **On Insect Shit:** As you may know, the formation of honey occurs by regurgitation, that is, without getting too nerdy and technical, it's bee vomit. I read the paragraph to my hubby, and he wondered the same thing: "Why are they saying that it's shit? Isn't it vomit?" Yes, yes it is, dear husband, but they're Orcs, and are we _really_ expecting them to be well versed in how honey is produced?
> 
>  **On Mordorian Spirits:** I've no idea how ale would be brewed in a place such as Mordor, and somehow I doubt that Orcs would care enough to grow barley to make malt and procure yeast to brew the ale. So, some dubious mushrooms (Hallucinogenics? Haha), some roots and Orcish saliva seems like it could produce something strong and nasty. But then again, I love to just pull things out of my ass, it makes things much easier.
> 
>  **On Obscure References:** "One fragile inch" is a small homage to V for Vendetta, wherein a character writes of how she will die in a cell in the experimental facility in which she is imprisoned for the "crime" of being homosexual.
>
>>   
>  I shall die here. Every last inch of me shall perish. Except one. An inch. It's small and it's fragile and it's the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.  
> 
> 
> _V for Vendetta_ (1989) by Alan Moore 


	5. Chapter 5

 

 

Immediately upon entering the Tower chambers, Gorbag and Morthauk retired to the brazier chamber, sending Mairwen to bring them some dried meat and bread. By the time she returned with a basket of foodstuffs, they had already drained the jugs that she and Gorbag had shared before the bedlam had erupted below. Sighing silently, she went to fetch more jugs as well, placing them between the Captains. She stood there for a moment then, uncertain, until Gorbag spoke to her.

“White-skin, fetch a rag an’ some water.”

She did so, approaching with a cloth flung over her arm and balancing a wooden bowl of water. The Captains were engrossed in some conversation in their own tongue, quaffing their ale and otherwise seeming darkly jovial. Mairwen set the bowl and rag down by Gorbag’s side, and made to retire to her alcove when he grabbed her leg. She flinched but did not cry out, only looking at him quizzically.

“Nar, sweet. You ain’t goin’ nowhere. I want you t’ wash me.”

She frowned.

“Wash you…?”

“Wash my _cock_ , pet,” Gorbag growled bluntly. “Take it out an’ clean it. D’ya want all that blood-rot _inside_ o’ ya when I fuck ya next? I think not.”

The other Captain laughed, spraying a mouthful of ale into the brazier. The coals hissed furiously.

“Har, Gorbag,” Morthauk chortled, “Ya were always such a fuckin’ jackanapes! Spoilt ya, she ‘as!”

Gorbag laughed along with his comrade, but his eyes were starting to darken as he waited for Mairwen to follow his order. Giving an exasperated sigh, she beckoned for him to spread his legs so that she could kneel between them with the waterbowl. The Orc Captain did so, leaning back on his hands. When she looked dubiously at his laces, he indicated that she was to open them. Clenching her jaws, she carefully plucked the knots open and did as she was bid.

“Good girl,” Gorbag purred. “Pull ‘im out an’ wash ‘im. Gently. I wan’ those soft hands o’ yours on ‘im.”

With that, he turned his attentions back to Morthauk. They resumed their conversation. Gorbag hissed when she palmed his member to pull it out of its confines, spitting at her to be more gentle since the day’s violent activities had left him sore and chafed. He sighed with relief when she brought the cool, wet rag to his member, gently dabbing at the black blood.

Morthauk didn’t pay any heed to Mairwen’s ministrations or the fact that Gorbag’s member was on display in front of him. In fact, even Gorbag did not break from their exchange as she washed him, only casting a glance at her a couple of times. Orcs did not seem to have even a modicum of propriety, it seemed to her. Thankfully, his member remained flaccid in her hands as she continued. When she had cleaned all of the blood off, she noticed that there were indeed some small tears on it that had contributed to the amount of blood, though most of it had come from his victim.

She immediately thought of some of the culinary herbs she had salvaged. She knew that one of them would make a good balm for tears such as these. The process was simple and created a very rudimentary antiseptic. The dry herb would have to be chewed and the resulting paste smeared on the wounds. The thoughts came automatically to her from years of assessing damage and mentally searching for the appropriate treatment for a patient.

She almost, _almost_ said something, but decided against it. He could have the discomfort, she thought spitefully. Why should she mend the weapon that he used against her with such grisly delight?

“You’re clean now,” she mumbled when there was a short pause in the conversation that the Captains were engrossed in.

“Good girl,” he said again, gingerly putting his member back into his breeches.

Morthauk smirked.

“ _Garn_ , Gorbag! Ye’ve got ‘er trained well.”

“Har! Aye, but she still needs th’ fist when she gets gutsy. Responds well to discipline, though, unlike th’ rabble downstairs. Give it a couple more days, and I’ll wager those pillocks will find sum other stupid shit to squabble over. This one ‘ere knows when to submit.”

Gorbag pushed a jug of ale into Mairwen’s hands and motioned for her to sit. She did so, reaching for some meat and bread from the basket, as well. The Captains resumed their discussion as she ate, washing down the dryness of the fare with the bitter draught. Their exchange soon turned to comments about her.

“ _Tarkilab gaz. Grishta kusn lat htol-to?_ ” Morthauk said, his rumbling voice starting to slur heavily. Mairwen wasn’t even sure if he knew that he had spoken in the Dark Tongue. Gorbag chortled, ale running down his scarred chin.

“Aye, but that makes it more fun, don’t it? Har!”

“Mannish females can take a fuckin’,” the red-eyed Captain continued in Westron, “Even a hard fuckin’. Elves though! Cheeky bints just up an’ die when ya give it to ‘em! Rude as all fuck! Hardly worth it, if ye ask me.”

“Ain’t ‘ad an Elf in ages, cunt nor ass,” Gorbag replied, “I remember them bein’ ‘specially feeble. Yer right, though. Li’l _tarkizub_ ‘ere takes Orc-cock well.”

Mairwen ignored their crude comments as she ate; it was nothing she hadn’t heard before. She had stupidly believed it when someone in her former life told her that words could wound just as badly as any weapon. What a childish notion! Words were utterly fleeting, no more than wisps of smoke that wafted away into nothingness. She knew now that actions could be much worse.

In any case, the talk of the two Orcs soon turned from Elf-and-Man-fucking to battle and killing, after which they slipped back into their Dark ramblings. She could pick up quite a few words of the cursed language by now, but she truly had little interest in anything at the moment except for the food and drink.

She soon noticed Morthauk’s eyes upon her. Red they were, glowing crimson when the light of the brazier flashed in them. She glanced at him carefully as she ate, assessing this new Orc. She had already noticed earlier that he was only a little bit taller than Gorbag. His limbs were a bit thicker, and his hide was nearly black. Like Gorbag, he sported long, pointy ears whose ridges were laden with many rings of different metals. The otherwise bald head featured a small patch of long, dark hair that had been gathered into a greasy tail.

His facial features were overly angular and pointy, and not only the ears. His cheekbones were so high and sharp that it looked like they would pierce the skin that covered them at any time. Dark, shadowed hollows were beneath them. The red, shining eyes were deep-set underneath a brow ridge that arched into two sharp points above each eye, and his nose was similarly sharp-shaped and laden with a handful of rings. His clothing consisted of a black, worn leather kilt, leather greaves, rusted scale armor and some type of netted tunic underneath. When he leered at her with his needle-teeth, she turned her gaze away and directing it into the coals, instead.

By the time she finished eating, she could feel the effects of the ale. Carefree warmth and calm settled across her mind like a heavy veil, and her eyelids started to droop. When her chin dropped to rest on her chest for the third time, Gorbag snickered drunkenly.

“Oi, white-skin, get yer li’l ass in bed afore you plant ‘at face into th’ fuckin’ coals.”

Mairwen didn’t have to be told twice. She rose unsteadily and chuckled mirthlessly at her own inebriation, making the two Orcs join in her laughter. As soon as she managed to stagger to her alcove, she slumped into the mattress and slept.

* * *

A splitting pain in her head, the likes of which she had never felt before, greeted her when she awoke. Stumbling out of her alcove and to the nearest window, she barely had time to stick her head out between the bars before she vomited, her knuckles white as she clenched the rusty iron and retched. When she finally stopped heaving, she heard a group of Orcs on the tier below roar epithets at her. Her head throbbed as she wiped her mouth, and before she realized it, she barked at the cursing Orcs with profound annoyance.

“ _Sharat!_ ” she shouted at them angrily, not realizing that it was not only her own tongue that emerged from her lips. “ _Sharat_ , you miserable… fucking... _pushdug dagrî-kruf!_ ”

They started shouting nasty curses back at her, at which point she simply spat down from the window and lurched to the privy chamber. Plunging her arms into the water barrel, she thoroughly washed her face and rinsed her mouth repeatedly to rid it of the taste of vomit and bile. She spat the excess into the privy and went back to her alcove. But as soon as she laid down, Gorbag called for her from his chamber, his voice thick with sleep and the after effects of intoxication.

She groaned but shuffled to his chambers all the same and went to his sleeping alcove. Without an invitation or an order, she collapsed onto the furs next to him.

“Oi, pet,” he grumbled, “I think we both ‘ad a bit too much. Was ‘at you swearin’ at th’ _snaga_?”

While the Orc Captain sounded inexplicably pleased with the idea, the only response Mairwen made was a muffled ‘mmmffph’ into the mangy furs. Gorbag grunted and told her to fetch some water, at which she mumbled at him to go fuck himself. She had no idea where the audacity came from, but she was too sick and tired to care. At this, the Orc Captain just laughed and then moaned at the aches throbbing behind his own eyes. Before long they both slept again.

* * *

Gorbag woke again some time later, finding himself in his bedding with his white-skin at his side. She was curled up against him, clothed, smelling of sick and stale ale. He had heard her giving some snaga-Orcs what for earlier, and no later had she gotten in bed with him had she told him to go fuck himself. He chuckled hoarsely at the memory. It amused him, and he found it strangely sweet. Her defiance was intact, no matter how much she whimpered and sobbed and submitted. She was never truly able to hide the hate in her eyes. It pleased him very much.

However, it would not have been correct to say that he was fond of her, because he was not. Gorbag was one Orc who, while spawned by natural means long ago, did no longer possess the ability for emotions of that type. The Darkness that reigned in the Land of Shadow had long since polluted his mind thoroughly, replacing every vestige of the being that he could have been with its black, parasitic taint.

He no longer remember who he had been or who had spawned him or even if he had littermates. He could not remember the place where he came from, were it a mountain or a valley or a forest. There were no recollections in his mind of how he came to be in Mordor and wield a black blade for the Master. Thus it had always been. So complete was the influence of the Dark One that even the faintest flicker of questions and recall had been permanently obliterated from his mind, leaving only cruelty, violence, megalomania and an absolute obedience to His Voice in its wake.

No, Gorbag did not have any truly profound feelings for his captive, not in the traditional sense of the word. The Orc Captain thought of her as a possession, a living thing to do with what he wished, and her defiance was just an added bonus. She was like a little Warg pup that could bite back if you yanked its tail enough, but then you could whip it into submission and revel in such an entertaining process. The only facsimile of fondness that his besmirched mind could recognize was that he would rather not part with her.

There was loud snoring coming from the chamber where they had been getting tanked the night before. Gorbag combed his claws through the sleeping white-skin’s hair a couple of times. Rising then, he stumbled to the privy, relieved himself and went to the brazier chamber where Morthauk snored, sprawled across leather cushions. Gorbag left him where he was for now and descended to the lower level instead, fetching one of the pots of stew that ever bubbled over the fire pits there. New odds and ends of unidentified foodstuffs were continuously added, creating a constant food source beyond just hard bread and dried flesh.

Gorbag ascended the stairs again, his stomach growling and his groin aching. _Garn_ , but that little _snaga’s_ poxy ass had done a number on his cock. But then again, he mused, whatever was left of that little shit had probably been added to the stew that was to serve as his breakfast. It was a gratifying thought. By the time he reached the brazier room again, Morthauk had awakened and was stretching noisily. Gorbag sat down, handed him a bowl of stew and started to discuss the proposal that his fellow Captain had mentioned the night before.

* * *

Something was poking her foot. Mairwen kicked out briefly with an annoyed, child-like grunt, but the thing returned, more insistent this time. Her mind was trying to fight through layers of fog and the remains of gritty drunkenness when she realized that she was no longer alone in her alcove. Not only that, but it wasn’t even _her_ alcove. Groaning and blinking in the blushing light of the lanterns, she saw the shapes of the Captains above her.

“White-skin,” Gorbag growled at her.

Mairwen blinked again, squinting stupidly at the two Orcs, her head too muzzy and clouded to process much of anything.

“Uh… what...?”

“You awake?”

“Mmmh… yes?

“There ya go, Morthauk,” Gorbag drawled to his fellow Captain.

Crouching next to Mairwen then, he grabbed her chin and squeezed her jaw hard enough for his claws to nearly gouge her face.

“Listen ‘ere, now. Morthauk’s a fellow Captain an’ me mate, and he’s gonna fuck ya. Be a good _tark_ an’ take it. If I hear of any mischief on yer part, you’ll get th’ lash.”

Turning to Captain Morthauk, he smiled darkly and said: “Have fun, yeah? Just don’t fuckin’ kill her or somethin, I wan’ her alive fer some time, yet.”

With that, Gorbag simply walked away, stopping only for a moment to stretch his lanky body with a groan of enjoyment when his spine cracked and twisted. Then he was gone.

The black Orc kneeled at her side. His gaze shone scarlet under his oddly triangular brows.

Mairwen’s eyes grew wide, and she shook her head slowly, bunching the furs against her chest. The Orc’s hands wrenched them away from her body, none too gently. Reaching for her laces, he growled deeply when she started to kick out at him. It was no good, for instead of unlacing her, he simply put a forearm across her thighs to cease her kicking, ripped the laces open and yanked her breeches off.

He purred when he pulled her tunic up and laid his big hands on her knees. She stiffened, trying to keep her thighs closed, but he simply wrenched them open all the same and kneeled between them so that she could not close them again. The Orc swiftly divested himself of various bits of armor and the netted tunic, leaving his leather kilt and boots in place. As queer as it was, he spoke to her in a low, even voice, his clawed hand snaking itself under the black kilt.

“Dun worry,” he said as his hand moved underneath the leather of his kilt. “I’m gonna shag ya, t’ be sure. But just relax an’ it’ll be over soon.”

“Why must you do it?” she entreated. “Could you not just… engage with one of your comrades? I’ve seen it happen. Gorbag has even rutted with them instead of me. They will most likely… enjoy it.”

“I _could_ ,” he admitted, “But really, I fancy fuckin’ yer kind. An’ it’s been awhile since me latest _tark_ wench. Yer lot’s always so soft, warm, tight… _alive_.”

Marwen shuddered and swallowed the tears that threatened to come. No, tears were not allowed, she knew. Tears might have excited him more, like they did with her captor. As long as she could speak to him, the longer he would stay off her… stay _out of_ her. At least there was some reasoning with this one. Had she ventured this discussion with Gorbag, she would most likely have been backhanded until her head spun and then fucked her until she was broken and raw and bloody.

“I don’t _want_ you to fuck me,” she muttered, desolate.

Morthauk gave her a lopsided grin, looking a bit weary but not irritated.

“I know, _âmbal_ ,” he told her mildly. “But I _will_ fuck you, there’s no gettin’ outta it.”

Mairwen scowled with helplessness, aversion, and anger. Anger at this creature. Anger at the degenerate creature that had her in his thrall. Most of all, there was anger toward herself. _Orc whore._

The black Orc kneeling between her legs made a small clicking noise with his tongue.

“I know ya won’t like it. But y’know, I’d prefer it if it didn’t hurt ya as much. Dontcha think that’d be better?”

Mairwen didn’t understand. His statement was so strange and confusing. What would he care of how much he hurt her? Bewildered, she looked into his gaze. There was no softness in his eyes, nor was there even a flicker of salvation nor pity or anything else that could help her.

His red eyes held the darkness that she had seen in the gaze of all Orcs, and she had heard the two Captains reminisce fondly about various atrocities that they had committed, some of them so heinous that they made her gorge rise. Yet Morthauk’s words seemed to convey some queer Orcish equivalent of benevolence. Could it truly be that some Orcs were not as savage as others?

She was not used to this type of ambiguity from an Orc, nor did she like surprises. As horrid as it was, at least Gorbag’s cruelty was a constant in her dismal life, something that she could always expect, like she had once known that after the darkness of the night, there would be a sunrise. It was disconcerting and frightening that this Orc behaved differently.

It set her teeth on edge and made her skin pebble with goosebumps; all of her suspicions flaring. Perhaps it was some ruse to lull her into some false security and _then_ … then there would be inconceivable pain and mutilation.

Mairwen looked away when he moved towards her, lifting his kilt. She waited for him to just crawl between her legs and maul her. A silent gasp escaped her when Morthauk drew a clawed finger down her thigh.

“Y’know,” he murmured, “I’ve always fancied me a bit softer fuckin’ than Gorbag. Make no mistake, I’ll rut ya hard, too. But I’ll do ya careful-like, first. ‘Til you can take it easier.”

Mairwen turned her gray gaze back to him, examining his eyes to see any sign of deception. She saw none, but she knew that it meant nothing. Orcs were deceivers, just like their Masters. She could only hope that he spoke truth; that he didn’t need her pain to find his pleasure.

Slowly, he stroked his black member until it was stiff and engorged, his red eyes roaming all over her. Reaching out, he palmed her small breast through her tunic, and she whimpered. His erection was monstrous now, even thicker than Gorbag’s, the veins and scars on it prominent and shining in the faint light from the lanterns. The tip of it was bulbous and she was fairly sure that if he forced that inside of her, he would break her.

Mairwen recoiled visibly and uttered a sound of protest when he moved to settle between her legs. Instead of just pinning her down and forcing himself inside of her, the Orc sat back on his heels, head cocked and watching her.

She had thought that she could just endure him until he was done using her. But his flesh looked absolutely grotesque, and she knew it was too much. Every time Gorbag had fucked her, there had been pain that lasted for at least a day. Gorbag’s member was long and thick and filled her until she burned with white-hot torment that threatened her sanity, but Morthauk’s member was even larger.

“Please,” she choked out, panic twisting in her throat. “Don’t. It will… you will hurt me so badly. So _very_ badly. Don’t. I cannot bear it. ”

“ _Quiil, rad_ ,” he mumbled at her, reaching out and stroking her dark hair. “We can do summat else. Mount me fer a bit; keep yer own pace. When you can take it, I’ll do ya til I finish. By then you’ll be spread a bit, an’ it won’t be so bad.”

Morthauk motioned for her to rise from her prone position and took her place instead, spreading his legs and cradling his hands behind his head.

“How would you know this?” Mairwen asked, narrowing her eyes with disbelief.

“It may be downright queer to you, Anorien spawn ‘at you are, but there are places where tark females don’t mind fuckin’ an Orc all ‘at much. Well, an Orc what ain’t crazy as a shithouse rat, anyway. I’m ‘fraid you got dealt a shit hand wit’ Gorbag, you did. He’s me mate, but he can be a daft fuck. Fancies pain in ‘is prey, that one.”

He beckoned for her to begin then, pulling his kilt up and making a sweeping motion across his hips. Letting out a shuddering sigh, Mairwen started to climb astride his hips until the Orc stopped her.

“Use spit,” he advised her softly.

At first, she didn’t understand, but remembered then how Gorbag would do the same to her to get inside of her easier. Spitting in her hand, she applied it between her legs. After considering it for a moment, she spat again and smeared it on Morthauk’s intimidating member, much to his delight if his raw groans were any indication.

She straddled the Orc’s hips hesitantly then, positioning herself above his erect member. Morthauk reached down and palmed the base of it, angling it upwards from where it laid heavily on his belly.

She clenched her teeth and started lowering herself. She felt the large head forcing her opening to yield to it and a keening wail of pain came from her. Morthauk put his hands on her waist, but did not push her down. He held her like that, and she noticed that it reduced the stress on her thighs.

With a loud cry, Mairwen pushed down and felt her body swallow the large head with a ripping sensation. Her opening clenched behind the head, bearing down hard after being breached wide. The Orc beneath her groaned with pleasure.

“Fuck, that’s good,” he rumbled, chest heaving, “Now th’ rest’ll be easier. Get used t’ it afore you take more. Easy, now.”

She did as he bade her, experimenting for a moment before putting her arms behind her and bracing her hands on his hard thighs. Slowly filled herself with him, and there was pain, stretching, scorching pain, but she dared not even think of how it could have been had he forced him inside of her in one rough motion. With a resonant gasp, she finally dropped and then she was flush with his groin, his entire length speared inside of her, filling her uncomfortably and making her pant rapidly for breath. A thin sheen of sweat coated her skin.

“Just… move ‘round a li’l, get used to ‘im.”

She nodded tremulously and started to flick her hips back and forth across his groin. It burned terribly at first. But after a few moments, she could feel her body flood with its own moisture. She was grateful for that, but beyond a few flickers of warmth when his cock touched sensitive spots inside of her, there was nothing else except for the invasive feeling of being breached by something that wasn’t meant to do so.

She felt her flesh starting to soften and give around his member eventually. As she became more accustomed to him, so did the pain lessen, just as he had said it would. Morthauk felt her flesh give as well, groaning deeply and clutching her waist. He beckoned for her to stop, but held her there.

“I’m gon’ take over now. Be still.”

Bracing his booted feet on the mattress, he allowed his hips to bore up into her. Mairwen gripped his thick wrists as he did so, moaning against the dull aches that reverberated through her loins. At least it was not violent, she had to admit. Well, _not yet_. His hips moved upward slow enough that she could feel the texture of his member without much hurt.

It became easier and easier to take him as he continued. A couple of times there was a few more fleeting sparks of heat as the pain lessened. She paid those little heed; she did not want to associate any Orc with anything even remotely akin to carnal pleasure. While this one was trying not to hurt her smaller body overmuch (she was grateful for that), she wanted no enjoyment out of it, only to endure it as painlessly as possible.

He stopped then, lowering her onto his hips again. His clawed hands were trembling dangerously where they clutched her waist; his eyes were slits of scarlet and shining with bestial lust. His needle-like teeth were clenched together tightly.

“I think… gon’ fuck ya proper, now. It’ll hurt ya, but not as much. Once I start, I won’t stop fuckin’ ‘til I seed ya.”

She obeyed and controlled her breathing as he lifted her off and moved over her, grasping both her white thighs with his paws and opened her for his use. She did winch and cry out when he entered, but once the head was past her opening, it was easier, like before. He hilted inside of her, his body trembling with barely suppressed hunger. In his eyes, the blood-light grew ominously, misting his mind with Orcish savagery.

With a loud roar that frightened her, Morthauk withdrew from her and thrust himself back in with savage abandon. Mairwen started to scream as he fucked her faster and harder, her cries cutting short each time he pushed into her and chased the breath from her body. The Orc’s red eyes were a haze of demanding need and brutality.

He pulled away from her for only a moment in order to yank her up and throw her against the alcove wall, her knees spread in the furs and her chest and face pressed into the stone. Soon he was upon her again and kneeling behind her; spreading her flesh and stabbing his monstrosity upwards into her. His claws tangled tightly in her hair then and his sharp teeth grazed her neck as he growled and snarled wetly. Mairwen moaned her discomfort into the cold slate, some of her fingernails breaking to the quick as she clawed at it uselessly.

The Orc’s release was approaching swiftly. Mairwen felt like things inside of her were torn asunder and displaced, but there was no escape as his movements grew wilder and more erratic. The blood-light was in him, and she had seen what it did to his kind. When he sank his sharp teeth into her shoulder and scraped bone, her screams multiplied. And finally, _finally_ , she felt her insides flood with his seed and dribble onto the furs between her knees, the gray droplets marbled red with her blood.

Morthauk remained inside of her for a while, his member softening as his breath slowed. He then unwound his hands from her hair, placing them on her hips, instead. Slowly, he withdrew his member from her until it left her flesh with a moist sound.

Mairwen collapsed down onto the furs, heaving for breath, eternally thankful that it was over. Captain Morthauk crouched nearby, wiping their fluids off his member with his fingers. Bringing the coated digits to his face then, he licked them clean with a black tongue and hummed with contentment.

Once Mairwen had caught her breath and the ache had subsided a little, she spoke. The Orc was replacing his tunic and armor, stopping when he heard her hoarse whisper.

“Thank you,” she murmured, even though she knew full well that she was thanking the degenerate creature that had just raped her.

But at least this was one rapist who did not relish her suffering. It was obscene that her world had been reduced to measuring and comparing her rapists in degrees of torment, when once she would compare her lovers in degrees of pleasure. She made a small, unsound grimace.

“Thank you for… for not _wanting_ me to hurt.”

Morthauk regarded her for a few moments before replying.

“I fucked ya. You didn’t want it, but ‘at’s how it is. Figured I’d make it easier for ya.”

Mairwen remained silent as he replaced the rest of his armor, bundling herself in the furs anew. She considered pulling her breeches on again, but the laces were ruined, and they’d just be soaked with the filth that was slipping out of her body, anyway. The bite-mark that Morthauk had bestowed on her bled and throbbed hotly. Once the Orc was done replacing his attire, he spoke.

“Well, white-skin, yer a real fine fuck. Maybe I’ll see ya again.”

Grinning at her with his mouthful of gray needles, he waved and at that, he was gone. Only then did Mairwen weep into the furs, but only long enough to lighten the heavy corruption in her chest by a small bit. Her tears were secret now, only shed in private to lessen the shame of her pollution. _Orc whore_ , she thought.

* * *

Gorbag watched his white-skin as she carefully walked to the privy chambers some time after his fellow Captain had left. The other Orc had done a number on her, for sure. Gorbag himself could remember taking Morthauk’s cock up his own ass at one time or another, and it could be a very rough ride.

Morthauk had thanked him for the sport with a satisfied grin, and they had shoved each other’s shoulders in the usual manner. Gorbag had invited his brother-in-arms to come and partake of the white-skin at anytime. The other Captain had nodded with a lopsided smile that showed a multitude of his narrow teeth and said that he may drop by again after the rest of his assigned inspections had been performed.

But he had also told Gorbag something queer. He mentioned that this white-skin could be prepared for fucking, and in doing so, her body felt much better when rutted with. This had interested Gorbag, and he had pressed Morthauk for details.

The other Orc’s descriptions of how he would make _tark_ females take cock better were vivid, and Gorbag nearly did not believe him when he said that he had smelt rut on her once or twice, even if it had been extremely brief. But then he remembered when he himself had prodded the small round tits on her chest and the heat between her white legs, and that he had been rather gentle about it. The smell of rut had blossomed in her and what’s more, the scent of her hate had grown stronger as well, overpowering the smell of fear.

The white-skin emerged from the privy chamber after a while, smelling clean, but Gorbag could still detect Morthauk’s musk on her along with the faint smell of the other Orc’s semen. She went to him automatically, asking silently if she may have a bowl of the cold, congealed stew that he had broken his fast with.

He handed her one and watched as she ate, her eyes downcast. Her tunic had slipped a little bit to reveal her shoulder, and Gorbag saw the mark of Morthauk’s teeth there. The sight of the marks along with the smell of another Orc’s leavings on her made his cock swell briefly, only to shrivel immediately when the expansion broke the tears on it anew. He winced and swore hotly, and the white-skin looked up at him with eyes the color of granite.

“That fuckin’ grunt,” Gorbag hissed, “Still pisses me off, that little dick-sniffer. Cock’s raw as a side o’ meat. Fuck it, I’m gettin’ sum ale. Want some, white-skin?”

She answered without hesitation: “I would like that, yes.”

He handed her a jug and watched her down the brew, the muscles in her throat working. It made him think when she screamed, how her throat tensed and flexed as she sang in such sweet agony. Soon he would be healed, he thought, and then… there were just so many games that they could play together. So many little pastimes that could chip away at that stony defiance of hers until it shattered. It wouldn’t be easy to break her, but Gorbag had always relished a challenge.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Tarkilab gaz. Grishta kusn lat htol-to?_ \- You human is small. Does she bleed when you fuck her?  
>  _Sharat!_ \- Quiet down; Shut up! [exclamation]  
>  _Pushdug_ \- Stinking [adjective]  
>  _Garn_ \- A contemptuous expression.  
>  _Âmbal_ \- Pretty [adjective]  
>  _Dagrî-kruf!_ \- Goat-whore [Dagrî - goat; Kruf - prostitute; whore]  
>  _Quiil, rad._ \- Quiet, now.
> 
>  **On Black Speech:** All of the Black Speech in this tale comes from the Land of Shadow site. Since I am no expert when it comes to Black Speech, things may be grammatically incorrect. But then again, someone once told me that Orcs may be similarly challenged when it comes to the finer points of linguistics. So... I've the smarts of... an Orc? I shall utilize this as an excuse. In any case, if I mangle the Black Speech herein and it bothers you... I will always welcome punishment. Open palm preferred over paddles.
> 
>  **On Goat Whores:** Had to throw that in there. These poor _snaga_ -Orcs will just have to deal with being vomited on and then called the name of a band that I like. The notion just gave me giggles, really.


	6. Chapter 6

 

 

There were good days and bad days the long, dark months crawled by. Mairwen had long since abandoned her attempts to truly keep track of the time since all that greeted her upon waking was the hazy gloom of a cursed place.

A good day meant that Gorbag was in a rather fine mood and she could ostensibly expect that he wouldn’t beat her. His molestations of her had, of course, resumed as soon as he had healed from his chastisement of the rebellious grunt. As disturbing as it was, she was getting used to being thrown down and violated at any given time.

When the blood-light was not in his eyes they could have moments of spurious merriment together as they played dice or bones or games with little oval, painted stones. They’d laugh together when the Orc Captain attempted to teach her certain sounds of the Dark Tongue and she mispronounced them badly enough that their meaning became something else.

They would eat together, and she would snicker at the disgusted grimaces Gorbag made when she managed to cajole him into trying some of the Man-food she had in her little hoard. Often, they drank together; Mairwen sang songs from her past life at times, though she had no singer’s gift and could not carry a tune.

The songs made whatever was left of her former self quiver with grief, but she ignored it pointedly and the drink made it easier. Gorbag would teach her bawdy Orcish songs that were croaked out in both Westron and the Dark Tongue, songs about drinking and fighting and fucking; songs about Elven whores and about Men and Dwarves buggering each other.

She had realized that when the Orc Captain was in one of his more jovial moods, she could spit back insults at him in both Westron and the Dark Tongue, the latter making him roar with laughter when she called him a _gluthak_ or _olog-kruf_.

She would be able to converse with him in a somewhat normal manner at these times, though the notion of normal was negligible, at best, in this Land of Shadow.

To an observer, they might have seemed like just an unlikely pair of friends had it not been for the fact that she was his slave and prisoner, and he was the Orc that would likely kill her one day when he grew bored of her.

* * *

Mairwen had learned to discern what kind of mood Gorbag was in rather accurately, paying close attention to the Orc’s body movements, facial expressions, and the malevolence in his sallow eyes—it was always there, granted, but it was a measure of degrees, really. When he was in a sour mood, his back would hunch dangerously like that of a predator ready to attack; his raspy voice turning into a dangerous, low growl.

The blood-light would creep into his gaze as it fixed on her with unmistakable viciousness and rage. She learned quickly not to antagonize him when these signs were present. She even kept their usual casual conversation at bay, avoiding him and not making any of the jests that they would usually laugh at together.

Still, he could turn his rage upon her in an instant, and it mattered not if she hadn’t even crossed his path. He would seek her out from where she hid, and thus it would begin. His punishments on those days were so horrendous that it was not uncommon for her to lose consciousness as he whipped her, trashed her and raped her in ways that she had never imagined possible.

The result of the Orc Captain’s flickering conniptions was now written all over Mairwen’s body. Big, dark welts in different stages of healing discolored skin that had once been pale and smooth. Scars from his whip latticed her back and marks from jagged Orc-teeth defiled her neck, shoulders, breasts, and hips. He often sank his teeth into her when his atrocious member was inside of her and he came, tugging at her flesh with his mottled teeth as her excruciating screams intensified his climax. Her marred body was now a map of suffering.

But then there were moments when he was not as violent as usual when he fucked her. These times were still the very antithesis of gentle affection, but they were far easier to bear than the alternative.

Mairwen could sometimes close her eyes during these calmer acts and pretend that she was somewhere else. In the middle of Pelennor Fields in the summer, a faceless lover between her unmarred legs while the sun warmed her rosy cheeks and a fresh wind that smelt of flowers and herbs caressed her skin.

But she did not succeed in her daydreaming very often, nor did it make her feel pleasure. Keeping her rooted in reality was the miserably familiar shape of the Orc Captain’s sinewy body as he moved above her. It was his growls and purrs of pleasure and the filthy thing that he kept sliding inside of her. And most of all, it was the _smell_. His smell was always there, invading her reverie and embedding itself deep into her nostrils. It was an old smell of iron, blood, filth and insane malice.

His calmer sexual acts made her hate him even more, his gentler touches even soiling her memories of lovers past. The hatred grew in her heart and darkened her mind and rushed through her blood like venom. She knew that it would eventually corrupt her until she was just as polluted and sick as her captor, but she would not even try to quell it. Instead, she allowed it to cling to her insides like a creeping, festering growth.

It was the one sensation that was always there when she needed it. It was allowing her to survive and feel _something_ true other than the pain that had chased away everything else within her. She had found that agony could blot out sorrow and regret and all of the other feelings that made her feel human, once. Except the hatred. She had realized some time ago that she craved the feeling, that black fire in her breast that was so cold; so freezing that it burned.

And it was all for the Orc Captain, for in her heart, he burned and burned again in the black flames of her loathing. Her hate for him had become a perverse, deformed substitute of the sensation that she had once known as ‘love’. It was the very opposite of what willing lovers might have shared, yet it smoldered in her all the same, equally strong and equally addicting.

* * *

Gorbag was groaning above his white-skin, looking down at her where she was kneeling in front of him. His claws were in her dark, silken hair and his cock was wetly slipping into her mouth and dipping down into her throat. His narrow hips undulated slowly as she mouthed him, her little thumbs pressing into his pointy hipbones.

It was nice to make her suck him off, sometimes. She had gotten the whole gagging and retching business under control, too. When he had ordered her to do it the first time, she had played the innocent and feigned ignorance. But when he asked her if she hadn’t ever sucked the cock of some Gondorian stripling, she finally nodded; her brow knitted and her gray eyes full of resentment. It had made him smile.

It had just turned into a whole messy business that just ended up with her retching half-digested Man-foods and other sour sludge all over his groin. His fist had sent her sprawling on the floor, but she had snarled angrily at him, spitting blood, asking him what the fuck he had expected, cramming his dick into her throat like that.

The next time was no different, and she had vomited all over him again when he thrust into her throat in a moment of carnal greed. He had nearly decided that this _tark_ was not made for cocksucking, which was strange in and of itself since any of his boys could take his cock deep in their gullets and thank him for it, too. You’d think a bloody white-skin what had mouthed Gondorian meat could mouth Orc-meat just as well.

Despite all the retching, he had ordered her to suck him off a third time, mostly since he had been nearly dead drunk. She had asked if he could go slow (at first!), so that she could get used to it when he shoved himself down her throat. In order not to vomit, she had added quickly.

He had allowed it since he had been feeling particularly altruistic that day (and really, as fun as _tarks_ were, it would take a special kind of weird blighter to enjoy all that reeking muck that she retched up). She had done what she said, and after a few sessions of that business, she was able to take all of him without it ending in a spectacle of slime and sick.

And now, as her little mouth was wrapped around his cock, he had to admit that her little training period had been worth it. She even allowed his gray spunk to slide down her throat without protest when he thrust deep and came. She simply wiped her mouth after and asked, almost child-like, if they could eat soon.

Gorbag laced himself up, very pleased, and even helped his white-skin up from her kneeling position. They proceeded to eat supper that consisted of a half-rotted haunch of venison that some patrol had yanked off while descending on an injured animal that they had found, ripping the thing to pieces while it still lived.

The decay of the meat did not bother Gorbag overmuch, but his white-skin insisted on scorching her bit over the brazier. She had once eaten raw meat that hadn’t been all that fresh. This had resulted in her groaning on the privy off and on for two days, shitting brown water.

Gorbag was already done eating by the time her meat was cooked to her liking. He crouched at her side and took one of her dark tresses in his hand, fingering and sniffing it.To her credit, the white-skin didn’t even flinch or stop eating her supper. When she had finished the mouthful she had been chewing, she spoke, sounding not a little irritated.

“Really?” she sighed. “I’m eating. Can’t you wait ‘til I’m done? I just sucked you off, didn’t I?”

Gorbag laughed at that. Her demeanor had changed gradually during the last few months as she seemingly had found her place in the Tower with him. He knew that she hated him, of course, and he would not have it any other way—he much preferred her loathing than anything else. But his white-skin had started to talk more and even mouth off to him, which he found to be quite amusing and enticing. No other Man-whore that he had kept had done this, and none had lasted as long as she.

There were some days that he would have none of it, and those were the days when the rest of the Tower could hear her screaming. He knew that she was adept at detecting when she should guard her tongue around him, but sometimes, her hatred simply found its way out of her mouth all the same.

Most of those times it was simply that she was such tempting a target to quell any frustrations upon. If he wanted to vent his rage easily, he would simply seek her out and punish her with the lash or his body, usually both. But today was not one of those days.

“Nar, pet,” he told her, rising, “Th’ _snagas_ ‘ave brought sum plunder. From traders, travelin’ ‘cross Ithilien. Stupid sods strayed too close to th’ mountain roots. Got themselves caught by Outer Fence patrols. After ya finish, come down t’ the lower level, an’ we can check th’ loot fer those Mannish foods that you fancy.”

* * *

As soon as Mairwen had finished her meal, she opened the oaken door in the antechamber and descended the spiral stairs to the level below. She could hear the loud, excited cackling of the Orcs as they most likely dug around in the plunder like wild dogs in the offal behind the butcher’s shop. She could hear Gorbag, as well.

“So nothin’ that needs to go t’ the Eye or armory, then?”

“Nar, Cap’n.” answered some Orc, “This shit’s all edibles and clothes, tools and whatnot.”

“Oi!” cried another. “Look at these ‘ere casks!”

She heard the popping of a cork, followed by generic Orcish hubbub.

“This ‘ere, mates,” exclaimed the same Orc, “is _rum_ , it is! Th’ swill ‘at corsairs drink.”

Mairwen heard as the cask was grabbed out of the paws of the protesting Orc, which was then followed by cursing and spitting.

“Troll’s balls! That there’s _foul_ , that is! Why th’ fuck would ya wan’ quaff _that_ ?!” someone barked.

“Ain’t no worse than ‘at Mannish berry piss, is it. ‘Sides, this’ll get ya off yer ass faster than anythin’, you’ll see. Ever seen a sober fuckin’ corsair?”

At that, a few individuals agreed to the truth of that; you seldom saw those pirate-fucks sober. Others started to clamor for a taste. However, just as Mairwen descended onto the landing, she heard a noise that made her start and focus her attention. It was the unmistakable whine of a human, and it made something stir in her chest as she hurried to Gorbag’s side where he stood, surveying a shape on the floor.

The heart that she thought only housed hatred wrenched when she saw the young man, perhaps a couple of years younger than herself, bound and trussed on the floor. His sandy hair was matted with blood from a cut at his hairline and his skin was blotched with grime. A darker hue of the sand of his hair shadowed his jaw, the indication of an adolescent beard.

His brown eyes darted around in panic until they found hers, recognition and relief dawning on his desperate features. Mairwen ground her teeth, knowing that his hope was so cruelly false. He called out to her. She knew his dialect immediately; a fellow healer in Osgiliath had been from Lebennin, as well. Some of this young man’s features revealed the presence of the mixed heritage common to the people of that region.

“Help,” came his plaintive cry. “Please help me…”

The healer that she had once been reacted instinctively, lunging forward from Gorbag’s side. But the Orc Captain was fast and had her by her wrist before she managed to reach the man.

“Th’ fuck you think you’re doin’, white-skin?”

“Let me go,” Mairwen snarled at him, struggling. “I must help him.”

“What th’ fuck he need your help fer? Bûrzaath, th’ fella over there, ‘as already claimed ‘im for his own self. Ya better leave ‘is spoils be. Bûrz’ll give ‘im a good ride, dontcha worry.”

A terrible rage overcame her, boiling in her veins like fire and exploding into a brilliant cataclysm in her mind. With strength that she didn’t know that she had, she yanked free of the Orc Captain and landed a hard, albeit clumsy strike on his jaw that made him stagger backwards with surprise.

Without thinking, she pivoted and avoided the grasping, ape-like arms of the other Orcs until she reached the man on the floor. Kneeling, she took his face in her hands, tore a piece of her tunic and spat on it to try to clean him off, to do _something_ , to help somehow, if only to feel the fading humanity within her before this place eradicated it entirely.

She had hardly dabbed at his face thrice when one of the Orcs got ahold of her, lifting her up by the scruff of her neck and dragging her away from the terrified young man. Mairwen screamed with anger, kicking and cursing like a spoilt child throwing a fit as she was carried back to her captor.

The last she saw of the young man on the floor as the wall of massive bodies around him closed again was his brown eyes. The horror, the confusion and the creeping hopelessness that she saw there made her chest heavy with despair.

The Orc deposited her in front of Gorbag and he wasted no time in twisting his claws in a handful of her hair and pulling her up to her knees. An animal-like sound of fury rumbled in his chest as he wrenched her hair tight, snarling into her face.

“You _dare_ to fuckin’ disobey me in front th’ rabble? Insolent li’l white-skin bitch. Let’s see if we can take care o that sass of yours, eh?”

With that, he yanked her along, dragging her kicking and screaming body up the stairs. The Orcs below hooted at her few times, but most of their attentions were fixed on the unfortunate young man. Soon, the youngling started to scream.

Mairwen swore at the Orc Captain, calling him every nasty epithet that she could fathom in both Westron and the Dark Tongue. Gorbag said nothing, his leathery face contorted into a grimace of malice as he pulled her with him. She might as well been the rotted haunch of venison that they had dined on earlier for all the attention he paid her.

And so he dragged her up, up, and up the stairs to the Tower chambers. Mairwen knew that when they reached their destination, she would pay dearly for her disobedience.

* * *

Gorbag furiously hauled the white-skin on the floor when they reached the Tower chambers. She had defied him in front of the entire rabble downstairs just for the sake of some little stripling of Men who would soon be on its fours and shafted in ass and mouth. As if anything she did could save the lad from his fate. Thus it was in Mordor and thus it had always been, and Gorbag did not question it. He _reveled_ in it.

The Orc Captain saw it as a dangerous attempt at undermining his authority, even if that hadn’t truly been her intent. It was the same as the little shit-grunt who had talked back to him, bold as you please. Losing face could be a fatal thing in the Tower, offering possible supplanters a reason for assassination in order to claim his title for themselves. The boys needed to know that _tark_ insubordination wouldn’t be tolerated either, no matter if he was shagging her or not. They would hear her scream. They would see her new wounds and bruises, after. And he’d make sure to fetch some deserving brothers to punish her as well. Word would spread fast.

His _tark_ scrambled to her feet quickly and surprised him by launching herself at him again.

She managed a couple of punches to his face before he captured her wrists. Full of impotent rage, the white-skin bitch screamed right in his face, defiant as could be.

“You fucking animal! Beast! Another one.... suffering…. for nothing! _Nothing!_ ”

It didn’t seem to matter to her that he had not procured the new _tark_ himself. What seemed to be her bone of contention was the presence of another _tark_ in the Tower. Gorbag leered viciously at her, which made her seethe, her normally pale face a flushed, twisted mask of fury. Her voice was an incensed bark that nearly made her sound Orcish.

“Monsters… monsters, the lot of you! Vile filth… he’s just a _boy!_ You fucking…”

Her tirade was cut short by his fist as it crashed into the side of her face. Her head jerked to the side, scarlet spattering from her nose. And still, she spat and stared him square in the eyes.

“Just kill me, blackguard,” she growled, “Kill me and be done with it! Miserable wretch!”

“You’d like ‘at, wouldn’t you,” he hissed darkly. “Nar, can’t ‘ave my white-skin all dyin’, can I? Seems t’ me though, ya need t’ be taught a lesson… an’ I’ve just th’ tools fer such a thing, as it happens.”

He threw her on the floor, and she landed prone on her back with a pained grunt. Before she had time to react, he descended on her, kneeling heavily on her upper arms to immobilize them while she growled and spewed curses at him. When he reached for his belt, he saw a tiny flicker of fear in her defiant eyes. Excellent. He undid the buckle, pulling the length of the thin leather cord out from around his waist.

Gorbag moved to straddle her waist and grabbed her wrists before she could lash out again. He was adept at this sort of thing, and he had her wrists secured with the belt before she could even understand what was happening.

That done, he grabbed her by the hair and dragged her squirming body into the brazier chamber. Knocking a lantern down from its hook, he hoisted her up and hooked her bound wrists around the curved hasp that had held the lantern. Her feet touched the floor, but she was otherwise nicely exposed and defenseless.

The white-skin jerked about a few times, but her struggles and curses started to grow weaker. Gorbag wagered that she had exhausted herself with those little hissy fits of hers.

He could not even express how much her defiance had enraged him. Nor could he express how much it had excited and pleased him. He had felt his cock stiffen when her little fists connected with his face, or when a kick jarred his leg.

And now, it was time to pay her back in kind.

And then some.

* * *

Afterward, Mairwen could not have said how long she was dwelling in some dark place beyond consciousness, trapped in the blissful oblivion of sleep; nearly refusing to wake up. She awoke from nightmares every now and then, screaming wildly with pain, until a flask with something thick and bitter was showed into her mouth. The liquid oozed down her throat and unfurled a whorl of fire in her belly that rendered her numb and chased her back to sleep.

Struggling through a red haze of pain and misery, she finally came to completely even though it took her quite a while to open and then focus her crusty eyes. She recognized the patterns in the stone above her. She was in her alcove and she was alone.

Trying to sit up, however, resulted in failure and she groaned deeply with the agony as she fell back to the lumpy leather mattress. The pain traversed her back, arms, legs; her loins, her belly... it seemed that everything that could sustain damage had done so. However, she could tell that it was not a fresh pain. She deduced that she must have been trammeled in sleep for several days, though how many, she could not be certain.

After some time, she was able to drag herself up, leaning her back against the cold stone wall. The sight that greeted her when she looked down on her naked body was a horror. The insides of her legs were crusted with dried blood and Orcish leavings. New bite marks defiled her everywhere, she even recognized the pattern of one on her jaw when she brought her hand up to her face.

Her back felt like ripped silk; new lashes had been applied there, as well. When the small of her back touched the wall, she screamed. Touching the injury there, she instantly recognized the type of pain it exuded and the texture of the damaged skin. It was a burn mark. She let her fingers carefully follow its strange shape and she quickly felt the symmetrical lines. She understood that this was no random burn. It was a brand.

She had been branded. Like _cattle_.

She quickly snatched her questing fingers away from the burn. She did not want to know what it represented.

Memories of that night started to creep back to her in little insidious slivers. She remembered Gorbag’s face, his scars deepening into furrows as his face contorted with sadistic pleasure and fury. The lashes of a whip licking her back, opening aging scars and creating new ones. The smell of her own flesh burning and the hot iron hissing angrily when the Orc Captain applied the glowing brand to her back. Blinding pain and the mad, gravelly laughter of her captor.

Then there were calloused hands on her. Clawed fingers inside of her. She could remember the Orc Captain hooking her legs around his waist where she hung and thrusting himself inside of her with punitive force. Wet grunts and growls came from him as he fucked her, and then from others. Others? Yes… there were others. She remembered a pair of sickly green eyes and another pair that were simply terrible voids of blackness. Black, shining marbles of villainous lechery.

Rough, scummy hands were groping at her breasts and hips and face. Tangling in her hair to yank her head back to expose her neck. Teeth that she knew sinking into her throat. Other teeth. Biting her. Fangs sinking into her hips and into her thighs as the Orc Captain continued fucking her, groaning in her ear.

_Yer marked now,_ tark. _Marked with th’ Great Eye. A true whore of Mordor..._

Talons stabbing into her back passage, carving ruthlessly and drawing blood. Gorbag’s continued rutting, and then another Orc pushing its repulsive flesh into the orifice that the Orc Captain was not using. Two of them inside of her, at the same time. Snarls of pleasure and foul-smelling spittle smearing her shoulders.

Filling, splitting agony, the feeling of simply dying from breaking apart looming nearby in the shadows. Screaming. Her own screaming… throat hurt, so much screaming. Tears came. After so long of keeping them secret. So many panicked, pained tears. And the Orc Captain licking at her face to taste them. Everything fading into the distance, even the things that were inside of her, savaging her simultaneously and filling her with foulness. Tearing… ripping… _breaking her_. Fading, so far away… soft shadows, calm, no pain. Calm. The hurt growing more and more distant. Then Mairwen remembered no more.

* * *

She slept again for an untold amount of time. She woke up to the sensation of someone prodding at her. Spreading her legs. Fingers going inside of her, oily and dripping, into both her passages. It stung badly, eliciting a hoarse moan from her dry throat. But then the digits withdrew and a numbness spread where the oil had been applied inside of her. When she opened her eyes, Gorbag was crouching next to her bedding and screwing the lid on a jar of oil. When he noticed that her hazy eyes were open, he grinned at her with gleaming, mottled teeth.

“There you are, sweet,” he said. “Layin’ abed, days on end. Tsk tsk.”

Mairwen whispered something, too faint for even her to hear it.

“Whassat?”

“Why didn’t you kill me?” she whispered flatly, louder this time.

The Orc Captain simply chuckled darkly at her, depositing the little jar into a pouch on his belt. There was no remorse in his eyes. No compassion. Nothing, not even as he gazed at her stained thighs and marred skin.

“Told ya,” he replied, “Can’t have my _tark_ dyin’. Don’t worry, I’ve made sure you’ll be on yer feet again in a couple days.”

He cocked his head at her, smiling.

“Ya got stuffed proper, pet,” he growled at her. “Got a couple of me sergeants up ‘ere to partake. Had no idea how much that li’l soft body of yours could take.Two Orc-cocks at th’ same time, no less! Good t’ know, really. You did go and pass out ‘bout halfway through. Sorta rude, innit? S’alright though, we still fucked you fer a good while, after. An’ here you are again, fit as a fiddle!”

She wanted to weep. So very badly. The corruption inside was so heavy that she wasn’t sure that she could bear it much longer. She felt the burning blur in her eyes, and she clenched her teeth against it.

But then there was a flicker inside of her. The burning cold. It rushed through her, animating her nerves and searing her with such a pleasant sensation that she sighed with gratitude. Her heart, only a husk moments before, felt alive again. The tears that had threatened receded and a gray, grim calmness settled over her.

And it was all for her Orc Captain. All that intoxicating, sweet hatred… all for him, and him alone .

“So, did we learn our lesson, white-skin?” Gorbag asked her with a toothy smirk. “Or d’ya need sum more… education?”

Mairwen shrugged, lying down on the furs again.

“I learned,” she said, her voice even. “I was wrong to disobey you.”

Gorbag laid down at her side, with a purr thrumming in his chest. Nuzzling closer to her, he placed a calloused hand on her belly, stroking it softly. Mairwen yawned, the aches inside of her nearly gone after he had applied the oil.

And oh, the hatred. So warm. So cold. So comforting. Flaring as he touched her, lulling her to sleep.

“I’m tired,” she murmured then, suppressing another yawn. “So… so very tired.”

The Orc Captain’s purr increased in volume and he pushed her onto her side, moving the press himself into her from behind her. He molded his gangly body against hers and snaked his arms across her chest and waist, pulling her to him. Mairwen clasped one small hand onto his scarred forearm, thumbing it softly for a moment before her eyes started to droop again.

“Aye, _tark_. Sleep,” Gorbag whispered in her ear, his breath hot and rotted. “My white-skin… little pet.”

And there they laid among the filthy, mangy furs, holding each other in a way that might have been interpreted as loving, caring behavior. However, it was not an embrace of tenderness that they shared. It was a completely possessive act of hatred and utter depravity.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Gluthak_ \- Pissface  
>  _Olog-kruf_ \- Troll whore
> 
>  **Map of Suffering:** _"My body is a roadmap of pain!"_ \- Agent Milton Dammers, _The Frighteners_ (1996)


	7. Chapter 7

 

 

Stretching his lanky body, Gorbag emitted a dry, gravelly groan upon waking.There was a susurrus of snuffling and snoring noises from the Orcs around him as they slept. A scarce handful were awake, eating or mending their armor and conversing in low tones. They nodded at their Captain when his gaze fell upon them.

Gorbag had been spending most of his time on the lower levels of the Tower as of late, fighting and drinking and eating and fucking with his fellows and grunts. The night prior, Shagrat had lost a game of dice to him and Gorbag had accepted the debt gleefully, requesting payment in a rather obscene manner that had only made Shagrat emit a rumbling laughter. The other Captain hadn’t really been too adverse to the whole thing, either; it wasn’t like they hadn’t rutted before. They had fucked and yanked and growled and clawed at each other well into the wee hours until sheer exhaustion claimed them both.

There was a pleasant familiarity when it came to screwing, or getting screwed by Shagrat. They had been mates for a long time, and had fucked almost as long. Gorbag knew Shagrat’s quirks and preferences like the back of his own hand, and Shagrat knew exactly how to respond in kind in ways that they both fancied.

He had fallen asleep on his fellow Captain’s lower belly, his nose close enough to the Orc’s groin that he could smell the distinct scent of pungent Orcish cock and their mingled, bitter fluids through Shagrat’s well-worn leathers.

Gorbag craned his neck, lifting his head slightly to glance at his fellow Captain. Shagrat was still asleep, snoring like a hog with snorting breaths that smelled like a plague-ridden rat drowned in a barrel of ale. It was a pleasant smell as far as Gorbag was concerned, and he poked Shagrat’s ribs with a twisted talon until the white-haired Orc stirred.

“ _Mal latum,_ ol’ boy,” Shagrat growled fondly and started to rise only to slump back onto the floor with a grunt that expelled another miasmic tail of rotten breath out of his maw.

A couple of other Orcs piled nearby grumbled and turned in their sleep at the movement, but grew still again.

“ _Garn,_ but ‘at one _snaga_ wasn’t shittin’ ‘bout ‘at corsair bevvy, was he,” Shagrat croaked, a thick forearm flung across his eyes. “How can those corsair cunts drink ‘at shit ev’ry day an’ still be alive? By Morgoth’s poxy arse, ‘at stuff’s strong.”

“Har! Their mares prob’ly feed th’ brats wit’ it ‘stead of all that tit-suckin’ business. Get’em while they’re young, eh?” Gorbag suggested.

Shagrat laughed hoarsely at that. The two Captains rose and shuffled over packs of sleeping Orcs to a nearby fire pit, where a large pot of boiled, bland meat had been stewing for at least a fortnight. New meat and offal from many creatures was added to the suspect mélange when the large kettle started to look empty. Using their claws, they fished chunks of meat, bone and gristle out of the simmering, gray water. The food helped their sour bellies and reduced the pounding behind their eyes.

“Speakin’ of tits,” Shagrat said after a few moments. “Watcha do with yer _tark?_ You ain’t been up there fer a while, now.”

“Eh, she’ll keep,” Gorbag replied, “Variety an’ duties, y’know.”

“Har! I gotta say, mate, it’s a bleedin’ wonder the thing ain’t dead yet. When ya staked a bagsie on ‘er, I figgered fer certain the _tark’d_ be dead within a moon’s turn. Resilient, ‘at white-skin o’ yourn.”

“Ain’t that the truth. Li’l _kruf’s_ tougher’n boiled leather. Here I thought I’d ‘ave me a bit o’ how’s yer father an’ she’d go all dead-eye. An’ then I’d give ‘er to the boys. But she ain’t gone dead, yet.”

“Brrr,” Shagrat mumbled, spitting out a few bone chips. “‘At stuff’s unnervin’, innit, when they go all dead inside. Th’ light goes outta their eyes, but they ain’t technically dead. Ain’t ever been partial to th’ corpses, neither, due to ‘at business. Makes me think o’ th’ Nine.”

“Ya think of th’ _Nine_ when yer screwin’?!” Gorbag cackled, spraying shreds of meat and flecks of gray marrow into the air between them. Shagrat made an irritated grimace.

“That ain’t what I meant, you daft shit, an’ you know it. Th’ Nine are dead, aren’t they, or Undead; who th’ fuck knows what they really are. But ain’t you felt ‘em lately, when they drift about? _Freezing_ , like. An’ like… despair. Heavy, black despair coming off ‘em like mist. Like a bit o’ their cursed realm’s suddenly here. Like the Eye woke and called ‘em back an’ they brung a bit of ‘at Dark world with ‘em.”

The white-haired Captain looked uncomfortable for a moment, as if his own sudden eloquence was unexpected and not a little awkward. But Gorbag only nodded and said nothing, for he knew exactly what his brother-in-arms was speaking of.

Still the white-haired Orc leaned forward and added: “They ain’t never felt like ‘at before. They used to be so… lethargic, like. Milling about all aimless. An’ then the Eye started to wake proper. And now… s’like they’re somehow deader, now. Deader, an’ darker.”

“Aye,” Gorbag agreed, lowering his voice to a cracked baritone whisper. It wouldn’t do to have an underling hear a pair of Captains expressing unease.

Satisfied at the lack of eavesdroppers, he continued quietly: “Somethin’s goin’ on. Th’ Voice is gettin’ louder, inside,” he said, tapping his temple with a black claw for emphasis. “An’ yer right. Those ghouls are more… here. An’ their blighted realm follows at their heels. Who th’ fuck knows what devilry that’s all ‘bout. Don’t think I wanna know.”

Shagrat nodded gravely but quickly back-pedaled on the subject, his facial expression speaking volumes about the fact that discussing these matters in the middle of a pack of slumbering grunts was not a stellar idea.

“Anyways,” the white-haired Captain said and straightened, plucking jelly-like marrow from the inside of a boiled bone. “I prefer ‘em not dead an’ y’know, movin’. Just surprised at yer white-skin. That she ain’t popped ‘er clogs. In any way.”

“Cheers. Aye, she still kicks an’ fights proper, an’ calls me names, sometimes. Even after th’ last time I punished‘er. I know ye heard _that_ business.”

“Ho-ho, th’ entire fuckin’ Tower heard _that_ business,” Shagrat quipped. “An’ still, she’s kickin’. Whatever stuff ‘at _tark’s_ made of, gotta be tougher than Dwarf teats.”

“That’s th’ truth of it. S’ rather sweet. Her defiance makes me fuckin’ hard as, _well_ —” Gorbag indicated the bone that his comrade was gnawing at, causing the white-haired Orc to guffaw. “—an’ if she fights me, can’t hardly even stuff’er proper before all that squirmin’ an’ cursin’ makes me spurt.”

“ _Skai!_ Watcha doin’ ‘ere, slummin’ with this lot? Gettin’ bored?”

“Somethin’ like that,” Gorbag said, spitting a glob of fat and gristle back into the stewpot. “Duties. Variety. An’ y’know… things… these things that are goin’ on’... th’ Voice.”

Shagrat agreed with a nod and said nothing else. Instead, he started worrying at another marrow bone that seemed loath to part the pulpy treat within.

The truth of it was indeed that most Orcs of rank had been occupied with sorting out their Mordorian peons. The visible presence of Captains helped to keep the grunts on their toes, and thus, most Captains had made a point of inspecting their respective regiments each day. In the case of Gorbag and the other few Captains who could claim Cirith Ungol as their domain, it meant keeping order in the ranks that dwelled in the Tower and the nearby camps scattered about the foothills.

Discipline was sorely needed; now was not the time for carousing or disobedience. Things were changing, it was true, and they could all feel the difference coursing through their black veins. Something substantial was afoot across Gorgoroth, and in Lugbúrz, the power of the Eye stirred sluggishly as if rousing from a half-conscious slumber.

His Voice had grown stronger and more frequent in the mind of Gorbag and his brethren. He had learned through some rather dubious-sounding Orcish gossip that _Sharkû_ , an ally of Mordor and a Wizard, had fallen; his army of Uruk-hai and Dundelings scattered to the wind when assaulting some Mannish stronghold or another. Men and Elves and a bunch of straw-haired horse-fanciers had allied and bested a bloodthirsty force of some fifteen thousand strong.

There was even some malarkey about some queer, shambling Trees and a Wizard aiding this alliance. Some gray grandfather or another. As if the world needed more of _those_ , Gorbag thought. Bunch of mushroom-gobbling, leaf-smoking twats, the lot of them, sticking their bony fingers in matters what needed not to be mucked with.

It was all quite ridiculous, really, but the Orc Captain had to assume that there was some truth to the hogwash judging by the way the Eye was gathering Dark power to Himself. Frequent orders were bleeding down the chain of command. Orders of fortifications, more training and harsher discipline. Even the presence of the Nazgul had increased, and, as Shagrat had so accurately put it, they _felt_ more dead somehow, more wraith-like and otherworldly; nasty Undead wretches.

The Nine would usually only be seen a few times each moon’s turn as they swept across the ashen plains, silently surveying the blackened landscape. As of late, their bleak, necrotic presence could be felt and seen nearly every day. Their unnatural, daunting cries had grown louder and more frequent as their shrouded and tortured not-bodies silently slid by camps and forts and towers, leaving trails of cold and nightmares in their wake.

Gorbag was one Captain who, while not particularly ambitious about rising above his current station, would do nearly anything to keep it. He wouldn’t give the wraiths any reason to report anything unfavorable to the Eye.

So it had been the whips, then. He ordered all of his sergeants to braid nails and other metal scraps into the leather tails of their scourges. Soon enough, any oaf who acted up would find himself with a shredded hide as opposed to one simply love-bitten by the lash.

The time for leniency was over, Gorbag had told his sergeants and reminded them of the fact that if the regiment made a proper fool of them, the Captain’s title wouldn’t be the only target for devious, enterprising supplanters. A couple of dozen of the more harebrained weevils in the regiment had been beaten to death before the rest of the rabble started to get the message.

Now, as order in the regiment had started to take shape, Gorbag did find his dark thoughts drifting back to the white-skin in the Tower chambers. He had only climbed the stairs drunkenly a couple of times to fuck her mechanically, mostly because it seemed like something he _should_ do when the opportunity was so close.

For some time, he had wondered if it wasn’t time to make a gift of her to the regiment and let them do with the white-skin what they would. She wouldn’t survive it for long. Other times, he found himself wondering how her flesh would taste off the bone.

But then he would recall the loathing in her eyes.

He did very much fancy a rut with his comrades and all that came with it. Engaging with lower-ranked individuals meant _snaga_ that would readily follow any demand when issued by a superior. This included his sergeants and lieutenants.

But when it came to Orcs that held the rank of Captain, the pastime could change rapidly into a precarious game of pleasure and dominance. Most of the time, the fucking would be mutual between these higher-ranked individuals, but when some Captain felt a bit adventurous, the conjunction could turn rather savage.  
The coupling would turn into a spectacle of rutting, biting, clawing and tearing. It was usually not an attempt at a true coup, but rather a matter of pecking order. Captains could achieve unofficial domination over others of the same rank, but such informal practices vis-à-vis position were concealed from those of lower rank in order to prevent any loss of discipline.

So far, Gorbag could enjoy the status of a Captain who fucked rather than got fucked amongst his peers. Most of the time, he had managed to come out on top, as it were, when it came to these eminent struggles. He wasn’t a Captain for naught, and the marks that turned his body into a spider’s web of scarring could tell the tale of rutting and fighting and War. But for all of their fighting and fucking, his comrades did not _hate_ the way the white-skin did. Her hatred was so alive and so dynamic, especially when she forced herself to submit to him.

It was not like the unhinged, all-encompassing loathing that infected the minds of the denizens of the Dark Land. Theirs was a parasitic hatred, as ancient and omnipresent as the Eye, implanted and nurtured by His hand. It was as commonplace as fleas on mutts and present in all who dwelled in the Land of Shadow. After a while, it affected even the Men who had come from the South to serve Him. And like any well-used thing, it had become rather pedestrian.

But _her_ hatred was a flash of cold lightning that made her gray eyes turn into frozen steel. And yet, it seemed oddly outlandish in her, as if it such a sensation was something that she hadn’t experienced before entering his service, as it were. As if the Orc Captain himself had seeded it in her, and her own hand was nursing it.

Gorbag could not say why he found it all so alluring. It was such a small thing, really, but he often found himself perpetually craving her enmity, and more than once had the thought of it stayed his hand from slaying her or making a boon of her for his regiment.

But when the white-skin hated; when she wept, his affinity for her returned, skittering across his black mind on little prickly spiny legs and chittering of bleeding flesh and defilement.

Since her chastisement by whip and fire and Orc flesh, she had not wept for him. Sometimes he could detect a dry sob hidden beneath her quaint moans, but that was all. The thought of her briny tears was enough to make his breeches feel as if they were shrinking.

After finishing his meal with Shagrat, Gorbag softly kicked a slumbering grunt nearby and ordered him to get on with some cocksucking. The grunt cleared his throat, spat out a brown glob of phlegm and did so readily. But then again, none of them would deny a Captain if they valued their hide.

The act was perfunctory, but it granted him the release that he needed to inspect his regiment in the days to come. Grabbing the long ears of the kneeling grunt, he held the Orc’s head still at his moment of rapture; spilling his seed deep into the scarred throat. Once inspections were performed, Gorbag thought, he would be able to take a leisurely furlough for a few days and visit the Tower chambers once more.

* * *

Mairwen, for her part, did not particularly lament Gorbag’s absence from the Tower chambers. While it was a lonely existence, she could easily bear it. He had only paid her a visit a couple of times, and then only to push her against the wall or over a table to fuck her, hard and fast. He would finish quickly and and disappear again like some nasty phantom, leaving behind a stench of Orcish draughts, sour sweat and malice and the slick sensation of Orcish seed between her legs.

Other Orcs came by every now and then to change the water in the barrel in the privy chamber, dump off some crates of looted Man-things ( _“Captain’s orders”_ ), or to replace the ever-burning candles in the chambers. Most of them didn’t pay her any heed at all.

But one of these grunts, a lichen-colored little snot, had started to cast lecherous glances at her one day. Mairwen had hardly paid attention to it, not until the next time he returned, bringing fresh candles for the lanterns. He had cornered her in the brazier room, boldly snarling at her that he was owed payment for his services. Leering, he had suggested that she could pay him on her back with her legs spread.

Mairwen had calmly pointed out to the slavering wretch that meddling with the Captain’s plaything was probably not the best of notions. He hadn’t bothered to answer as he advanced on her, the blood-light filling his amber eyes.

Before he had been able to grope at her, she had smashed the heel of her palm into his snout. There was an audible crunching sound when her hand connected with the Orc’s face. A torrent of black blood rushed forth, and while it stunned the Orc, the blood-light in his eyes did not dissipate until Mairwen crashed her fists into his face and abdomen a few more times.

At that, the grunt had retreated out of the Chambers while spewing nasty insults and black blood at her; attempting to regain some dignity even though they both know that she had effectively annihilated any trace of such. She realized that struggling with Gorbag had made her body stronger and the hate within her had rendered her ruthless. She felt rather surprised as she watched the blood rush between the Orc’s fingers where they clutched its mashed snout. Surprised, but not displeased.

She had never physically fought with another being in her former life. She had paid dearly for her clumsy attempts to wallop the true target of her ire. But this time, she had sent an Orc scurrying, even if it was just a small _snaga_. She regarded the droplets of Orc blood that had splashed on the stone floor like little black flowers. They had made her smile.

Rummaging around in the handful of crates that had been deposited into the antechamber had produced only a couple of treats. She had found a glass jar of candied violets, and while she had never even thought of violets as a sweetie, she remembered her mother speaking of their other uses.

Violets had properties that would get the bowels moving again, her mother had taught her, but they shouldn’t expect to find any, she had added quickly, especially since other plants could be used for the same purpose. The little deep purple flowers were popular in the opulent gardens on the upper levels of the White City. Those who inhabited the upper levels were content in pretending that the inhabitants of the lower levels did not exist at all.

The petals tasted exactly the way the dark, velvety flowers smelled, but with a sweetness provided by the candied coating. Mairwen decided that she liked this strange find, and stashed the jar in her hoard.

There hadn’t been many other edibles this time, but along with the violets she found dried blueberries and a small wheel of hard, dry cheese that smelled like dirty feet. The other few crates simply contained a jumble of items such as books, scrolls, quills, balls of twine; pots of blue, black, and green ink. There was even a small jar of sand that she knew could be sprinkled onto the wet ink of a parchment, to speed up its drying time.

But none of those things did her any good; the writing utensils even less so. It had irritated her. But when she plunged her hands to the bottom of one crate in frustration, shoving useless miscellany aside, she felt something poke her hand. It wasn’t sharp nor did it break her skin, but the noticeable hardness and slight chill of the thing caught her attention—she recognized that it was made of metal.

Digging her hands into the bottom of the crate, she found it: it was a quill knife, a small blade set in a simple bone handle with the purpose of sharpening quills. The leaf-shaped blade, hardly half length of her thumb, would not do much in terms of bodily harm as it was small, oft-used and fairly dull.

She had taken it anyway, sure that she could find a use for it eventually. It felt like a secret treasure in the pocket of the sage-green men’s tunic that she was wearing at the time. She had hidden it underneath the mattress when she returned to her alcove.

While Mairwen lacked the usual company of the Orc Captain, he had left plenty of drink behind in the shadowy recesses of the Tower chambers. She had quickly started to pass her time with cracking open barrels of ale or casks of sour wine and drinking the contents until a pleasant numbness enveloped her. She did not indulge every day since the inevitable sickness would follow. However, still she stumbled to her bed often enough, inebriated and thinking of her dead, drunkard father. 

She had never really understood her father’s need to drink himself into a complete stupor only to wake up the morning after, sick as an alley dog, and scramble fervently to scrape together the coins needed for another round. She knew now that it was an easy means to blot out the unsavory aspects of reality. It could only do so temporarily, of course, but the drink somehow entombed it and kept its grisly starkness at bay. And sometimes the temporary oblivion was worth the subsequent sickness.

* * *

  
Something tugged at Mairwen’s hearing at the edge of consciousness, rousing her from her heavy, intoxicated sleep. Whispering reached her as she woke slowly; it was a soft murmuring canticle that seemed rather unfamiliar, though she could not be sure. At first she thought that the voice belonged to her captor, returning from his duties. But as she cracked her eyes open, the strangely gentle crooning ceased. The chambers revealed nothing but the usual sepulchral stillness that had surrounded her for the majority of her time as of late. Deciding that it was nothing but residue from some dream, she laid her head down again, pulling the matted furs tighter around her body.

But the voice came again, its whispers louder and more discernible this time. She lurched to a sitting position when she heard the unmistakable murmur of her name.

“Who goes there?” she called out to the chambers, but the ancient stone around her gave no reply. But then, a reply did come, but from within her own head, originating at the base of her skull and flowing across her consciousness in the form of a sound that she knew had absolutely no place inside her mind.

_Mairwen. Child of Anorien. Concubine of Cirith Dúath._

She flew up out of her bedding then, clothed only in a boy’s tunic that she had found, shivering violently even though the chambers currently held no particular chill. The muttering intensified into a soft, Dark voice inside her head, a voice that was beautiful and horrendous in equal measures.

Its seductive tones faded to a humming chorale in the back of her mind, in an arcane language that she should not have understood but that seemed to speak to the threadbare tatter that her soul had been reduced to.

It whispered of pain and suffering, of exquisite darkness and of desires fulfilled; it whispered of blood and fire and piss and shit. When her mind recoiled from its foul murmuring, the Voice quickly pulled her back into its Dark hymn again, soothing her with something that she knew to be false and malicious, but could not resist.

With silent confusion and fear, Mairwen felt it reach for her old life with long, grasping fingers like invasive roots. Her recollections slowly turned Dark; contorted into gruesome caricatures of themselves as the thing prodded her memories and stained them with blackness. She was utterly unprepared for such an invasion and completely clueless of how to resist it, like many others of her kind before her.

Her body began to jerk as her mind was invaded and she slumped down onto the furs again; her limbs twisting into grotesque gnarly branches and her jaws wresting open until she could hear crackling noises at her temples in place of the scream that refused to emerge from her gaping maw.

In her damaged mind’s eye, she saw the faces of her father and mother, the pores of their skin leaking black oil and the corners of their familiar mouths splitting open when they smiled at her with teeth like translucent shards of amber glass. She saw herbs withering into black ashes in her grasp, her hands turning gray and dead; the veins under the pale parchment of her skin standing out in sharp, blue relief. Her fingernails were beetle wings.

She felt her bare feet, daubed not with cool mud but with hot, slippery viscera. She watched her fingers draw out jaundiced, bloodless fetuses from the rotting, worm-ridden wombs of dead women who watched her sadly with eyes made of pus. Memories of healing turned into scenes of unbearable mutilation.

Terrified and desperate for something familiar, she found the hatred in her heart and embraced it, allowing it to saturate her like honeyed poison.

However, she did not realize that her loathing that had helped her survive was the very thing that allowed the accursed presence of the Land of Shadow to invade her mind deeper. The Dark One sensed the path that her hatred opened into her mind, and like a predator it lunged after its prey, delving deep into the mind that it was set on besmirching.

Mairwen’s body arched with horror and agony and a strangled noise erupted from her throat. Froth started to gurgle out of her mouth. It crept down her chin, white and thick like rich lace. The foam soon became tinted pink with the blood that began to trickle out of her nose as the Voice assaulted her consciousness. An inexorable demand for acquiescence throbbed painfully behind her eyes, forcing them to roll back into their sockets. Her hatred bloomed fondly in response, obeying the terrible thing and opening her up for the Darkness to invade deeper.

Other harrowing images reached her then, and she could feel her mind groaning and creaking like an old wooden beam under the relentless assault. The tormenting Dark forced her body to bend further into a arcing bow of pain and horror. She saw men and women from the South and the East, screaming and suffering in the same way that she was as the Dark thing invaded their minds. It whispered to them about power and wealth and vengeance for slights long forgotten, both real and imagined. She saw them rise after their violation, their eyes Dark like those of Orcs, the blood-light welling in them as they howled for blood to water the soil of Arda, not realizing how fundamentally and cruelly deceived they had been.

Then her gaze fell upon the White City, its alleyways choking with the broken bodies of butchered children. She could smell the White Tree of Minas Tirith burning before she saw it, and she witnessed herself smiling with cracked, violet lips at the sight of the heads of Men smeared upon the ancient, alabaster stone.

Even though she knew him to be dead, she glimpsed the screaming face of the trickster healer who had taught her Liar’s Dice, his face scorching with fire that matched his red beard. His skin crinkled and blackened and wept like a side of pork over a too-hot fire and she found herself wanting to suckle the steaming blood and grease from his burning face.

The tiny pith of herself that remained shuddered with terror at the Dark spectacle, retreating somewhere far inside where Mairwen could no longer reach it. At last, her throat allowed a terrible, guttural scream to burst forth and for a few moments as she wailed, her body was suspended in its horrid arc by the Darkness alone. The Voice whispered of the final insult, showing her writhing with pleasure underneath a slavering pack of Orcs as she begged them to fuck her until she was raw and bleeding.

With that, Mairwen’s screams tapered off and her body collapsed from its unnatural, contorted position, slumping down into the furs again with a heavy, boneless thud. A violent surge of bile boiled at the back of her throat and she retched, lying on her side, too weak to even kneel in order to keep the sick off the furs. She found herself unable to move, unable to fall into the unconsciousness that her savaged mind begged for. All she could do was stare with wide, dry eyes at the wall, her body rigid and freezing in the shadows of the alcove. When she was finally able to move, she felt Dark, hot blood streaming down her thighs.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Mal latum_ \- Informal Orc greeting. “What’s up?”.
> 
>  **The Voice:** This was a tricky chapter for me to write. I wanted to try to convey how someone who has never been under the thrall of Sauron may experience his Voice when he invades their mind, as it were. In this admittedly un-canon tale, I’ve imagined his Voice to be very much akin to cult-like mind control, that is, he wants to get anyone and everyone under his control fast, and negative feelings such as hate would allow him to do so much more easily.
> 
> Imagine a compromised immune system being assaulted by an organism. A healthy immune system is assaulted by organisms every day, and stomps most of them out easily. But when weakened, these organisms can easily gain the upper hand. That would be the allegory that I would use for Sauron’s invasion of Mairwen’s mind. However, do not make the mistake of thinking that there’s something special about her that he’s interested in; there isn’t. I can imagine that after starting to regain his power, it was time to clean house, and she was just a little blip on his radar that needed to be fixed. And we will see how it will ultimately affect her. Honestly, I am not even sure about that one, yet.
> 
> Yes, I know, I ramble. In any case, do let me know if the latter half of the chapter made sense and conveyed what was happening properly. And please let me know if you’ve any suggestions. I am unsure if I managed to write it the way I wanted to. And I get tunnel vision like whoa.
> 
>  **On Beetle Wings:** “Her fingernails were beetle wings” is a reference to a song by Marilyn Manson.
>
>> ...The hands are cracked and dirty and / The nails are beetle wings…
> 
> \- Marilyn Manson, _Kinderfeld_ (Antichrist Superstar, 1996) 


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